Stetzer and many others on leveraging dual-process theories of reasoning

Mila Kryjevskaia, MacKenzie R. Stetzer, Beth A. Lindsey, Alistair McInerny, Paula R. L. Heron, and Andrew Boudreaux 

Designing research-based instructional materials that leverage dual-process theories of reasoning: Insights from testing one specific, theory-driven intervention 

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 16, 020140 – Published 4 December 2020 

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] Research in physics education has contributed substantively to improvements in the learning and teaching of university physics by informing the development of research-based instructional materials for physics courses. Reports on the design of these materials have tended to focus on overall improvements in student performance, while the role of theory in informing the development, refinement, and assessment of the materials is often not clearly articulated. In this article, we illustrate how dual-process theories of reasoning and decision making have guided the ongoing development, testing, and analysis of an instructional intervention, implemented at three different institutions, designed to build consistency in student reasoning about the application of Newton’s 2nd law to objects at rest. By employing constructs from cognitive science associated with dual-process theories of reasoning (such as mindware and cognitive reflection), we were able not only to examine the overall improvement in student performance but also to investigate the impact of the intervention on two aspects of productive reasoning—mindware and cognitive reflection. Our analysis showed that the intervention strengthened students’ mindware such that students were able to apply it as a criterion while checking the validity of their intuitive responses. Moreover, logistic regression revealed that the success of our intervention was mediated by the students’ cognitive reflection skills. Indeed, for students with comparable mindware, those who demonstrated a weaker tendency toward cognitive reflection were less likely to initiate conflict detection and therefore never had the opportunity to utilize their mindware. We believe that this kind of integrated, theory-driven approach to intervention design and testing represents an important first step in efforts to both account for and leverage domain-general reasoning phenomena in the learning and teaching of physics.

van de Bogart, Stetzer, and more on metacognition, troubleshooting, and circuits

Kevin L. Van De Bogart, Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, H. J. Lewandowski, and MacKenzie R. Stetzer

Investigating the role of socially mediated metacognition during collaborative troubleshooting of electric circuits

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 13, 020116 – Published 12 September 2017

Developing students’ ability to troubleshoot is an important learning outcome for many undergraduate physics lab courses, especially electronics courses. In other work, metacognition has been identified as an important feature of troubleshooting. However, that work has focused primarily on individual students’ metacognitive processes or troubleshooting abilities. In contrast, electronics courses often require students to work in pairs, and hence students’ in-class experiences likely have significant social dimensions that are not well understood. In this work, we use an existing framework for socially mediated metacognition to analyze audiovisual data from think-aloud activities in which eight pairs of students from two institutions attempted to diagnose and repair a malfunctioning electric circuit. In doing so, we provide insight into some of the social metacognitive dynamics that arise during collaborative troubleshooting. We find that students engaged in socially mediated metacognition at multiple key transitions during the troubleshooting process. Reciprocated metacognitive dialogue arose when students were collectively strategizing about which measurements to perform, or reaching a shared understanding of the circuit’s behavior. Our research demonstrates the value of the framework of socially mediated metacognition in providing insight into the nature of collaborative student troubleshooting in the context of electronics. As such, this framework may be a useful resource for future efforts to examine and support the development of student troubleshooting skills in other upper-division laboratory courses.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.13.020116

Ferm Speirs Stetzer Lindsey on using reasoning chains

William N. Ferm Jr., J. Caleb Speirs, MacKenzie R. Stetzer, and Beth A. Lindsey

Investigating student ability to follow and interact with reasoning chains

The effectiveness of scaffolded, research-based instruction in physics has been extensively documented in the literature. However, much less is known about the development of students' reasoning skills in these research-based instructional environments. As part of a larger collaborative project, we have been designing and implementing tasks to assess the extent to which introductory physics students are able to logically follow and interact with hypothetical student reasoning chains in a variety of physics contexts. In this paper, we report preliminary results from a "Follow Reasoning" task in which students are asked to infer the conclusions that would be drawn from different lines of reasoning articulated by hypothetical students and provide justification for that inference.

W. N. F. Jr., J. C. Speirs, M. R. Stetzer, and B. A. Lindsey, Investigating student ability to follow and interact with reasoning chains, 2016 PERC Proceedings [Sacramento, CA, July 20-21, 2016], edited by D. L. Jones, L. Ding, and A. Traxler, doi:10.1119/perc.2016.pr.025.

Speirs Ferm Stetzer Lindsey on reasoning chains

J. Caleb Speirs, William N. Ferm Jr., MacKenzie R. Stetzer, and Beth A. Lindsey

Probing Student Ability to Construct Reasoning Chains: A New Methodology

Students are often asked to construct qualitative reasoning chains during scaffolded, research-based physics instruction. As part of a multi-institutional effort to investigate and assess the development of student reasoning skills in physics, we have been designing tasks that probe the extent to which students can create and evaluate reasoning chains. In one task, students are provided with correct reasoning elements (i.e., true statements about the physical situation as well as correct concepts and mathematical relationships) and are asked to assemble them into an argument that they can use to answer a specified physics problem. In this paper, the task is described in detail and preliminary results are presented.

J. C. Speirs, W. N. F. Jr., M. R. Stetzer, and B. A. Lindsey, Probing Student Ability to Construct Reasoning Chains: A New Methodology, 2016 PERC Proceedings [Sacramento, CA, July 20-21, 2016], edited by D. L. Jones, L. Ding, and A. Traxler, doi:10.1119/perc.2016.pr.077.

Van de Bogart, Dounas-Frazer, Lewandowski, and Stetzer on metacognition in troubleshooting

Kevin L. Van De Bogart, Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, H. J. Lewandowski, and MacKenzie R. Stetzer

The Role of Metacognition in Troubleshooting: An Example From Electronics

2015 Physics Education Research Conference
Published Dec 18, 2015

Students in physics laboratory courses, particularly at the upper division, are often expected to engage in troubleshooting. Although there are numerous ways in which students may proceed when diagnosing a problem, not all approaches are equivalent in terms of providing meaningful insight. It is reasonable to believe that metacognition, by assisting students in making informed decisions, is an integral component of effective troubleshooting. We report on an investigation of authentic student troubleshooting in the context of junior-level electronics courses at two institutions. Think-aloud interviews were conducted with pairs of students as they attempted to repair a malfunctioning operational-amplifier circuit. Video data from the interviews have been analyzed to examine the relationship between each group's troubleshooting activities and instances of socially mediated metacognition. We present an analysis of a short episode from one interview.

Dounas-Frazer, Van De Bogart, Stetzer, and Lewandowski on troubleshooting in electronics labs

Dmitri R. Dounas-Frazer, Kevin L. Van De Bogart, MacKenzie R. Stetzer, and H. J. Lewandowski

The role of modeling in troubleshooting: An example from electronics

2015 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings
Published Dec 18, 2015

Troubleshooting systems is integral to experimental physics in both research and instructional laboratory settings. The recently adopted AAPT Lab Guidelines identify troubleshooting as an important learning outcome of the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. We investigate students' model-based reasoning on a troubleshooting task using data collected in think-aloud interviews during which pairs of students attempted to diagnose and repair a malfunctioning circuit. Our analysis scheme is informed by the Experimental Modeling Framework (EMF), which describes physicists' use of mathematical and conceptual models when reasoning about experimental systems. We show how students' work on a troubleshooting task can be mapped onto the EMF.