Establishing a relationship between student cognitive reflection skills and performance on physics questions that elicit strong intuitive responses

Abstract

After targeted instruction designed to improve student conceptual understanding of physics, a significant fraction of students are not able to answer many questions in a consistent manner. Prior research suggests that even those students who demonstrate that they acquired the relevant knowledge and skills (i.e., possess the requisite "mindware") still tend to rely on their intuitively appealing (and often incorrect) ideas. This study aims to provide insights into cognitive mechanisms that may lead to the identified inconsistencies in student reasoning. We present results of an empirical investigation guided by dual process theories of reasoning and accompanying theoretical constructs of cognitive reflection and mindware. Specifically, we proposed a set of hypotheses to establish a link between student abilities to mediate intuitive responses and performance on physics questions that elicit strong intuitive responses. The cognitive reflection test (CRT), developed by cognitive psychologists, was used to measure students' ability to engage in analytic processing in a more productive manner (i.e., cognitive reflection skills). Additionally, we developed a set of screening-target questions in the context of Newton's third law to assess student reasoning approaches in physics. Results suggest that, in the presence of the necessary mindware, those students who possess a higher level of cognitive reflection skills are more likely to (i) arrive at a correct answer on a question that tends to elicit a strong intuitive, but incorrect response; (ii) recognize the need for justifying their answers, even if a correct answer does not require rejecting an intuitively appealing response; and (iii) engage in consistent reasoning.

Probing student reasoning in relating relative phase and quantum phenomena

“…She identified "energy cannot be imaginary" as a resource element activated by some students when prompted to determine possible value(s) for an energy measurement. Here, we identify a different theoretical framework that may be productive to guide a further empirical investigation: dual process theories of reasoning [41,42]. The data presented in this paper suggest that while students appear to be familiar with the formalism for determining quantum probabilities and are proficient with complex numbers, many still tend to rely on an incorrect but intuitively appealing idea that "phase cannot be measured."…”

“…This suggests that the quantum tasks used in this study may elicit an intuitively appealing but incorrect response. Dual process theories have been increasingly helpful for examining students' intuitive thinking in introductory physics [42,43], but we are not aware of any studies that apply a dual-process theory in upper-division quantum mechanics. We suggest the development and investigation of such a dual-process theory to help account for students' intuitive thinking in quantum mechanics as a line of future research.…”

Using cueing from question pairs to engage students in reflective thinking: An exploratory study

“…From the perspective of DPTOR, the reasoning that leads students to an incorrect answer can come from a lack of relevant conceptual knowledge or from choosing an incorrect intuitively appealing answer without engaging in analytic reasoning. Our view of how a DPTOR lens applies to the context of conceptual physics questions is informed and enriched by previous work by Heckler [3]; Wood, Galloway, and Hardy [4]; and Gette and Kryjevskaia [5].…”

“…As discussed by Gette and Kryjevsjaia [5], "the analytic process could be engaged either by imposed external conditions (e.g., requirements to provide an explanation) or in the presence of a strong 'red flag."' However, they go on to re- * joss@phas.ubc.ca mind us that reasoners engaging in analytic thinking might still maintain their heuristic model due to confirmation bias.…”

Investigating a collaborative group exam as an instructional tool to address student reasoning difficulties that remain even after instruction

“…At the same time, a growing body of research suggests that, even after targeted instruction designed to address persistent student difficulties, many students continue to reason inconsistently [3][4][5][6]. In particular, some students are able to demonstrate necessary conceptual understanding on some physics tasks but fail to do so on isomorphic tasks that require the application of the same knowledge and reasoning but also tend to elicit strong intuitively appealing ideas [7][8][9][10].…”