• Open Access

Toolboxes and handing students a hammer: The effects of cueing and instruction on getting students to think critically

N. G. Holmes, Dhaneesh Kumar, and D. A. Bonn
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 13, 010116 – Published 13 April 2017

Abstract

Developing critical thinking skills is a common goal of an undergraduate physics curriculum. How do students make sense of evidence and what do they do with it? In this study, we evaluated students’ critical thinking behaviors through their written notebooks in an introductory physics laboratory course. We compared student behaviors in the Structured Quantitative Inquiry Labs (SQILabs) curriculum to a control group and evaluated the fragility of these behaviors through procedural cueing. We found that the SQILabs were generally effective at improving the quality of students’ reasoning about data and making decisions from data. These improvements in reasoning and sensemaking were thwarted, however, by a procedural cue. We describe these changes in behavior through the lens of epistemological frames and task orientation, invoked by the instructional moves.

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  • Received 10 January 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.13.010116

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Physics Education Research

Authors & Affiliations

N. G. Holmes*

  • Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14853 New York, USA

Dhaneesh Kumar and D. A. Bonn

  • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada

  • *ngholmes@cornell.edu

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Vol. 13, Iss. 1 — January - June 2017

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