Probing Student Ability to Construct Reasoning Chains: A New Methodology

Speirs, J. Caleb; Ferm, William N.; Stetzer, MacKenzie R.; Lindsey, Beth A.

doi:10.1119/perc.2016.pr.077

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Problem solving and conceptual understanding in science often requires multistep processes or chains of reasoning in which a number of decisions must be made by the student either implicitly or explicitly, that is, with a combination of heuristic and analytic processes. For example, Speirs et al [31] describe a multistep chain of reasoning associated with a kinematics graph task, and Kryjevskaia, Stetzer, and Grosz [28] describe multistep reasoning paths that appear to include both heuristic and analytic processes for capacitor and wave pulse tasks. In an example more closely related to a physical scenario studied here, Rosenblatt, Heckler, and Flores [32] found that, even postinstruction, many students in an introductory materials science engineering course believe that high mass density implies high melting temperature, and this conclusion is produced via the physically incorrect line of "reasoning" that high mass density implies small atomic separation, and this implies high atomic bond strength, which in turn implies high melting temperature.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning with alternative explanations in physics: The cognitive accessibility rule

Heckler

Bogdan

2018

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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A critical component of scientific reasoning is the consideration of alternative explanations. Recognizing that decades of cognitive psychology research have demonstrated that relative cognitive accessibility, or "what comes to mind," strongly affects how people reason in a given context, we articulate a simple "cognitive accessibility rule", namely that alternative explanations are considered less frequently when an explanation with relatively high accessibility is offered first. In a series of four experiments, we test the cognitive accessibility rule in the context of consideration of alternative explanations for six physical scenarios commonly found in introductory physics curricula. First, we administer free recall and recognition tasks to operationally establish and distinguish between the relative accessibility and availability of common explanations for the physical scenarios. Then, we offer either high or low accessibility explanations for the physical scenarios and determine the extent to which students consider alternatives to the given explanations. We find two main results consistent across algebra-and calculus-based university level introductory physics students for multiple answer formats. First, we find evidence that, at least for some contexts, most explanatory factors are cognitively available to students but not cognitively accessible. Second, we empirically verify the cognitive accessibility rule and demonstrate that the rule is strongly predictive, accounting for up to 70% of the variance of the average student consideration of alternative explanations across scenarios. Overall, we find that cognitive accessibility can help to explain biases in the consideration of alternatives in reasoning about simple physical scenarios, and these findings lend support to the growing number of science education studies demonstrating that tasks relevant to science education curricula often involve rapid, automatic, and potentially predictable processes and outcomes.

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Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning with alternative explanations in physics: The cognitive accessibility rule

Heckler

Bogdan

2018

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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“…This finding is consistent with expectations from the dual-process theories of reasoning and reinforces similar results from chaining tasks reported in the physics literature. 21 In the heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning as presented by Evans, 29 the first available mental model can be highly resistant to change, especially when it is rooted in a commonly held belief such as the notion that bond breaking is an exothermic process. 26 According to the singularity principle, students will tend to formulate a single hypothesis and only abandon this belief if they encounter evidence that forces them to consider an alternative.…”

Section: ■ Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this work, we adapt a new methodology developed in the field of physics education research called a reasoning chain construction task, or "chaining task". 21 In a chaining task, students are presented a question and several conclusion options (similar to the answer options in a multiple-choice question). In these tasks, however, students are also provided a series of statements, referred to as reasoning elements or "tiles", which are related to the question being asked.…”

Section: ■ Methods Reasoning Chain Construction Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, we present the reasoning chain construction task, a novel question format recently introduced in the Physics Education Research literature. 21 These tasks provide a new option for eliciting and analyzing student reasoning patterns in chemistry. In a reasoning chain construction task, students are able to freely generate a line of causal reasoning by drawing from a limited suite of accurate information in the form of reasoning statements that are provided to them.…”

Section: ■ Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Implementation of Reasoning Chain Construction Tasks to Support Student Explanations in General Chemistry

Nagel

Lindsey

2021

J. Chem. Educ.

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The assessment of student understanding, and of student reasoning skills more broadly, hinges upon the ability to elicit and interpret student-generated explanations. In practice, however, the explanations that students provide in response to traditional prompts do not always reveal as much about student reasoning as teachers and researchers in chemistry education might prefer. In this article, we describe the application of a novel methodology, the reasoning chain construction task, applied in a general chemistry course at a large research institution using a well-known question on chemical bonding. In a reasoning chain construction task, students respond to a chemistry question by drawing from a list of reasoning elements (all of which are true) in order to assemble a chain of reasoning in support of a conclusion. Our findings indicate that use of this type of task can lead students to generate richer explanations while not impacting the overall distribution of student conclusions. These explanations provide teachers and researchers with insights into what information students deem helpful and relevant for responding to a prompt that is wholly lacking from traditional free-response implementations of the same question. We interpret our results through the theoretical framework of dual-process theories of reasoning.

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“…After students answered the target question, they were presented, one at a time, with the hypothetical answers of two fictitious students, one of which is correct (A) and the other of which is the most common incorrect answer (B). For each hypothetical answer, students were asked to construct a line of reasoning that the fictitious student might have used to reach their conclusion via the reasoning chain construction format [17], a modified card sort activity implemented within Qualtrics' "Rank/Group/Sort" question format (Fig. 4) [18].…”

Section: Research Design and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting student construction of alternative lines of reasoning

Mays¹,

Stetzer²,

Lindsey³

2021

2021 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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An emerging body of research suggests that, even after research-based instruction, poor student performance on certain physics tasks may stem primarily from domain-general reasoning phenomena rather than from a lack of conceptual understanding. The reasoning patterns (and inconsistencies) reported in these studies may be explained by dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR). In order to help students strengthen their reasoning skills and support increased cognitive reflection, there is a need to design and test instructional intervention strategies that leverage DPToR and that may ultimately guide the development of research-based curricular materials that attend to the nature of human reasoning more explicitly. This investigation focused on an intervention designed to support analytical processing in which students were asked to set aside their own reasoning and engage in alternative lines of reasoning. In the intervention, students first responded to a qualitative physics task, then constructed reasoning chains in support of answers to that task given by two fictitious students, and finally revisited the original physics task. Analysis revealed that this intervention was successful at improving student performance. Furthermore, it appears to have supported students regardless of their cognitive reflection skills, and its effectiveness may potentially be correlated with the quality of reasoning chains generated in support of the correct fictitious student's response.

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Probing Student Ability to Construct Reasoning Chains: A New Methodology

Cited by 4 publications

References 3 publications

Reasoning with alternative explanations in physics: The cognitive accessibility rule

Reasoning with alternative explanations in physics: The cognitive accessibility rule

Implementation of Reasoning Chain Construction Tasks to Support Student Explanations in General Chemistry

Supporting student construction of alternative lines of reasoning

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