  Previous work has identified that recognition from others is an important
predictor of students' participation, persistence, and career intentions in
physics. However, research has also found a gender bias in peer recognition in
which student nominations of strong peers in their physics course
disproportionately favor men over women. In this study, we draw on methods from
social network analysis and find a consistent gender bias in which men
disproportionately under-nominate women as strong in their physics course in
two offerings of both a lecture course (for science and engineering, but not
physics, majors) and a distinct lab course (for science, engineering, and
physics majors). We also find in one offering of the lecture course that women
disproportionately under-nominate men, contrary to what previous research would
predict. We expand on prior work by also probing two data sources related to
who and what gets recognized in peer recognition: students' interactions with
their peers (who gets recognized) and students' written explanations of their
nominations of strong peers (what gets recognized). Results suggest that the
nature of the observed gender bias in peer recognition varies between the
instructional contexts of lecture and lab. In the lecture course, the gender
bias is related to who gets recognized: both men and women disproportionately
over-nominate their interaction ties to students of their same gender as strong
in the course. In the lab course, the gender bias is also related to what gets
recognized: men nominate men more than women because of skills related to
interactions, such as being helpful. These findings illuminate the different
ways in which students form perceptions of their peers and add nuance to our
understanding of the nature of gender bias in peer recognition.
