When procedures discourage insight: epistemological consequences of prompting novice physics students to construct force diagrams

ABSTRACT

One aim of school science instruction is to help students become adaptive problem solvers. Though successful at structuring novice problem solving, step-by-step problem-solving frameworks may also constrain students’ thinking. This study utilises a paradigm established by Heckler [(2010). Some consequences of prompting novice physics students to construct force diagrams. International Journal of Science Education, 32(14), 1829–1851] to test how cuing the first step in a standard framework affects undergraduate students’ approaches and evaluation of solutions in physics problem solving. Specifically, prompting the construction of a standard diagram before problem solving increases the use of standard procedures, decreasing the use of a conceptual shortcut. Providing a diagram prompt also lowers students’ ratings of informal approaches to similar problems. These results suggest that reminding students to follow typical problem-solving frameworks limits their views of what counts as good problem solving.

KEYWORDS:

• Problem solving
• epistemology
• physics education

Acknowledgements

We thank the instructional staff of the physics course for working with us to conduct this research. The AAA Lab and Wieman Research Group provided thoughtful suggestions on the study design and analysis. Finally, thanks to Andy Elby, Cristina Zepeda, and two anonymous reviewers, who provided useful comments on a previous draft. Eric Kuo is currently at the Learning Research & Development Center, University of Pittsburgh. Nicole Hallinen is currently in the Departments of Psychology and Psychological Studies in Education, Temple University. Luke Conlin is currently in the Department of Chemistry and Physics, Salem State University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Eric Kuo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5292-6188

Notes

1. Five out of six diagram type disagreements had only one rater labelling the diagram ambiguous. In all of these instances, the authors resolved that these should be ambiguous, because the diagrams were not well labelled and could be interpreted in multiple ways. Stronger evidence of labelled diagrams would be required to not be coded as ambiguous. Seven out of nine approach disagreements were about whether an approach was ambiguous. The substance of the disagreement was between how articulate or complete the procedure or shortcut needed to be. The resolution was that approaches could be coded as procedure (or shortcut) if it was clear that students were expressing relationships between forces on one of the boxes (or on a system of two or more boxes). Six out of seven of these disagreements were resolved to be either procedure or shortcut. From the five correctness disagreements, the correctness was refined as follows: for Q2, correctly solving for the two tensions without taking the difference is sufficient, and the answer needs to be numerical or in terms of variables given in the problem text.

2. On the evaluation code, there were three disagreements that produced a clarification: simply requesting more work or clearer explanations should not be coded as a formal complaint.

3. The most common error (five out of nine errors) for the shortcut approach was to solve for the incorrect tension.

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences [grant number R305B150014].