Making expert processes visible: how and why theorists use assumptions and analogies in their research

Abstract

Understanding how physicists solve problems can guide the development of methods that help students learn and improve at solving complex problems. Leveraging the framework of cognitive task analysis, we conducted semi-structured interviews with theoretical physicists (N=11) to gain insight into the cognitive processes and skills that they use in their professional research. Among numerous activities that theorists described, here we elucidate two activities that theorists commonly characterized as being integral to their work: making assumptions and using analogies. Theorists described making assumptions throughout their research process, especially while setting their project's direction and goals, establishing their model's interaction with mathematics, and revising their model while troubleshooting. They described how assumptions about their model informed their mathematical decision making, as well as instances where mathematical steps fed back into their model's applicability. We found that theorists used analogies to generate new project ideas as well as overcome conceptual challenges. Theorists deliberately sought out or constructed analogous, indicating this is a skill students can practice. When mapping knowledge from one system to another, theorists sought to use systems that shared a high degree of mathematical similarity; however, these systems did not always share similar surface features. We conclude by discussing connections between the ways theorists use assumption and analogy and offering potential applications to instruction.

Making expert cognitive processes visible: planning and preliminary analysis in theoretical physics research

“…We first analyzed the process diagrams by grouping parts of each theorist's diagram into sub-processes (idea generation, preliminary design and analysis, executing research, and drawing conclusions) based on the common goals of each phase. A detailed discussion of these codes is presented in [16]. This process allowed us to gain insight into the first research question regarding the role that preliminary planning plays in theorists' research.…”

“…The analysis presented here seeks to address this gap, and is a subset of a larger project investigating theoretical physicists' problem solving in real-world contexts [16]. We conceptualize theorists' "problem solving" in such naturalistic settings similarly to Price et al [11], who characterize problem solving as encompassing diverse activities such as generating research questions, doing calculations, and interpreting results.…”