Choosing the right solution approach: The crucial role of situational knowledge in electricity and magnetism

Abstract

Novice problem solvers are rather sensitive to surface problem features, and they often resort to trial and error formula matching rather than identifying an appropriate solution approach. These observations have been interpreted to imply that novices structure their knowledge according to surface features rather than according to problem type categories. However, it may also be the case that novices do know problem types, but cannot map the problem at hand to a known type, because they fail to create a sufficiently well-elaborated problem representation. This study aims to distinguish between these explanations. In this study novice physics students at high and low levels of proficiency completed two problem-sorting tasks from the domain of electricity and magnetism, one with and one without elaboration support. Results confirm that these students do distinguish problem types in accordance with their required solution approaches, and that their problem-sorting performance improves with elaboration support. Therefore, it was concluded that their major difficulty lies in the process of matching concrete problems to a proper category. Within-group analysis revealed that the performance of proficient novices clearly improved with elaboration support, whereas the effect for less proficient novices remained inconclusive. The latter finding is explained from the less proficient novices’ problem representations being too fragmented to integrate new information. These results suggest that, in order to promote schema-based problem solving, instruction in the domain of electricity and magnetism should be based not so much on restructuring the conceptual knowledge base but rather on enriching situational knowledge

Secondary Students' Conceptual Understanding of Engineering as a Field

“…Investigations of secondary students' career choices have understandably focused on social constructs such as selfefficacy as important influences on career choice (Savelsbergh, de Jong, & Ferguson-Hessler, 2011). For example, Bandura et al write that ''…socioeconomic, familial, academic, and self-referent influences operate in concert to shape children's career trajectories,'' (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 2001, p. 198).…”

Models as Relational Categories

“…Several studies have found that experts categorize physics problems according to the underlying principles, whereas novices are sensitive to the superficial surface features (such as the different objects present in the task) (Chi et al 1981;Savelsbergh et al 2011;Snyder 2000). What is more, Snyder (2000) showed that experts, intermediates, and novices all represented problems at multiple levels of abstraction, but that intermediates' and experts' representations were more principle-based than those of novices who were sensitive to the concrete features of the problems.…”

“…It has also been suggested that teachers' demonstration of the modeling of problem solving processes or letting the students compare worked out solutions leads to learning of deep, structured knowledge (Richey and Nokes-Malach 2015;Rittle-Johnson and Star 2007;Savelsbergh et al 2011). It may also be that the sufficiently simplified epistemology of, for example, Hestenes's and Halloun's approaches as wells as their clear and comprehensive rules that lead from the theoretical principles to model construction contribute to their effectiveness by scaffolding the teachers and students alike.…”

“…Typically, recognition of the deep features of a problem requires a lot of elaborations (or Bconstruction rules^) in order to build a meaningful physics representation (Savelsbergh et al 2011). Indeed, Hestenes (1987) argued that experts spend considerable amount of time in constructing problem representations to which specific principles can then be applied.…”

Impact of a short intervention on novices’ categorization criteria

“…The most prevalent method for studying how people form categories for physics problems is by using card-sorting tasks [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. In most of these studies, textbook-style physics problems are printed onto index cards or listed on a piece of paper and study participants are asked to place the problems into groups based on solution similarity and to assign a name to each group.…”