Leveraging dual-process theories of reasoning to understand and support student reasoning

Abstract

Introductory physics courses aim to improve students’ problem-solving and reasoning skills. To aid in attaining this goal, researchers in physics education have studied students’ qualitative inferential reasoning to develop and refine theoretical frameworks for how students reason through qualitative physics problems. Recently, researchers have begun to apply dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR), from cognitive science and psychology, to support mechanistic predictions of student reasoning in physics. This talk will explore the DPToR framework and discuss the ways in which it is being used to expand student reasoning skills in the physics classroom.