Examining Interruptions in a Student's Solution-generating Process for Indicators of Conceptual Knowledge

Abstract

Assessing a student's conceptual understanding of a particular subject is challenging as a result of its abstract complexity and personal nature. A schema-based framework for describing the relationship between grouped knowledge sets can be used to visualize and represent aspects of conceptual understanding. This paper puts forth a set of criteria to indicate when a student's solution generation process fails as a result of inadequately defined schemata. A three-year longitudinal study involving semi-structured interviews of undergraduate engineering students was performed as a means of data collection. An analysis of the data based on the proposed criteria set was performed for the purpose of investigating changes in the student's conceptual understanding.