Developing scientific decision making by structuring and supporting student agency

Abstract

Scientific expertise is manifested through extensive cycles of making and acting on decisions. To learn the processes and practices of science, therefore, students must have practice with scientific decision making. We argue that this can only happen if students are afforded agency: the opportunity to make decisions to pursue a goal. In this study, we compared two different introductory physics labs through the lens of structuring and supporting student agency. We explore both the role of decision making agency (students are afforded opportunities to make decisions about their lab investigations) and epistemic agency (students are afforded opportunities to generate knowledge). We found that the two labs differed in both the amount and type of structure provided to students: one lab (the intervention condition), with more overall structure, cued student decision making; the other lab (control condition), with less overall structure, made decisions for students. Students in the intervention condition documented, on average, ten times more decisions during their investigations, including more unprompted decisions. In contrast, in labs with less available epistemic agency (i.e., labs where they had to verify or demonstrate canonical models or constants), students in the intervention condition documented fewer decisions than in labs with more available epistemic agency. We associate the improved decision making with students taking up personal agency, based on significant shifts in students' tone as they described their experimental methods (from passive, third-person narratives to active, first-person narratives). Students in the intervention condition also made higher-quality decisions in line with scientific practice. The study speaks to the important nuances between structure and agency in instructional labs and tests the generalizability of previous research on lab instruction to a two-year college population.

Template for teaching and assessment of problem solving in introductory physics

“…The aims for this template were twofold. First, we hoped that this template would scaffold expert decision making for students, and thus help them become better problem solvers, similar to van Heuvelen's active learning problem sheets and the work of Holmes et al [25][26][27]. Second, we hypothesized that the template could be used to better measure students' problem solving practices as they solved introductory physics problems by providing more detail as to their process than offered by the typical student solution.…”

Assessing problem-solving in science and engineering programs

“…In the next phase of this project, we will use our assessment to test the efficacy of an instructional intervention in the introductory design course at university #2. The intervention will be in the spirit of Salehi [20] and Holmes et al [21]: we will have students practice making expert decisions-with particular emphasis on reflection and planning-as they complete design exercises throughout the semester. Through this, we expect that students will develop more sophisticated predictive frameworks.…”

Sense of agency, gender, and students’ perception in open-ended physics labs

“…In science education, the goal is not simply for students to make decisions -the goal is for them to learn to make decisions in line with scientific practice [16]. Thus, students should be supported in making their own decisions in open-ended course work [17]. The literature on social learning suggests using teaching processes such as modeling, coaching, scaffolding, and then slowly fading support [18].…”