Author(s):
Need: For over 30 years, research-based materials developed by the physics education research community have helped transform introductory physics instruction. Many of these materials focus on the development of student conceptual understanding and place considerable emphasis on qualitative inferential reasoning. An emerging body of research, however, suggests that poor student performance on certain physics tasks – even after research-based instruction – may stem more from the nature of human reasoning itself than from specific conceptual difficulties. Analysis of student reasoning patterns through the lens of dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR) from cognitive science suggests that students may not productively scrutinize (via slow and analytical process 2) provisional models generated by fast and automatic process 1 when responding to physics questions containing salient distracting features. As a result, student may not draw upon the knowledge and skills (or mindware) they have successfully demonstrated on an analogous question. There is thus a need to identify strategies for leveraging DPToR that can be used by curriculum developers and instructors to strengthen student reasoning in physics. Guiding Questions: As part of a larger effort to investigate and support student reasoning in physics, we have been working to identify and more thoroughly characterize factors that may impact the effectiveness of DPToR-aligned interventions and strategies. There are many factors of interest, including mindware, cognitive reflection skills, and the specific reasoning trajectories of students as they engage with the physics question prior to the intervention. In the work described in this poster, we are applying the reasoning pathways intervention approach (which includes several different strategies) to questions in different physics contexts to explore two core questions: (1) To what extent does the effectiveness of specific, DPToR-aligned strategies depend on factors such as students’ cognitive reflection skills, their reasoning trajectories prior to the intervention, their responses to previous intervention questions, and the specific nature of the intuitively appealing yet incorrect response to the physics question? (2) How, if at all, are students’ reasoning trajectories both before and during the intervention impacted by differences in the physics question (and the associated intuitive models generated by process 1)? Outcomes: By identifying, to the extent possible, the regions of effectiveness for different intervention strategies, we hope to gain more insight into the underlying mechanisms behind the effectiveness of those DPToR-aligned intervention strategies. This, in turn, will support our multi-institutional project’s goals of both developing a framework for research-based curriculum development aligned with DPToR and providing pragmatic resources for instructors and curriculum developers. Broader Impacts: Given our project’s focus on the intersection between domain-general reasoning phenomena (as modeled by DPToR) and reasoning in physics, efforts and interventions aimed at supporting student reasoning in physics may help students strengthen their reasoning skills more broadly (e.g., in domains other than physics as well as in daily life). Ongoing work has revealed that DPToR-aligned interventions are productive in other domains as well, including, for example, chemistry. Thus, the impact of the findings and deliverables from this project extend well beyond physics.
Coauthors
Em Sowles, University of Maine, Orono, ME; Thomas Fittswood, University of Maine, Orono, ME
