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This paper explores the remarkable success of one 7th grade student as she discovers foundational concepts while engaging in an NGSS-aligned unit on modeling magnetism. Student success in modeling is of particular interest in the PER community. Through understanding how students are able to create mechanistic models, we can reveal core practices which in turn can be used to inform instructional design. Here we examine one student who was able to synthesize the key concepts of magnetism: that a magnet is comprised of microscopic magnetic dipoles and that the orientation of these dipoles determines the orientation of the macroscopic polarity. We present significant excerpts of the progression of the modeling process in order to illustrate the key factors that affect her learning: her iterative use of evidence to guide her reasoning, her use of prior knowledge, and the interactions with her teacher and peers.

Magnetism is a significant topic in physics and student reasoning about magnetism is of interest to PER. Temporary magnetism is encountered during scientific inquiry, and pervasive in school physics, despite it typically not being an explicit part of the curriculum. We examine how middle grade students reason with this complex topic, and findings demonstrate that students' reasoning about different facets of this topic reflect that complexity.

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