CHARACTERIZING STUDENT REASONING TRAJECTORIES THROUGH THE LENS OF DUAL-PROCESS THEORIES*

An established body of research has found that students who have shown sufficient understanding of relevant physics concepts and skills (mindware) may perform inconsistently on analogous questions, even after research-based instruction. These inconsistencies can be explained through dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR). According to DPToR, students engage in a variety of different reasoning trajectories when working on a physics question, and optimization of instructional interventions for these different trajectories may improve effectiveness. The focus of this investigation is thus to identify and characterize common reasoning trajectories as students work on a physics question (target question) that elicits incorrect, intuitive reasoning approaches. In this work, students were first served a screening-target pair of physics questions (with the screening question providing an independent measure of mindware), followed by a set of metacognitive prompts about their reasoning on the target. The use of response timing data and scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test allowed for a more thorough characterization of student reasoning trajectories. In this talk, we present recent results and discuss implications for research-based instructional materials.