Epistemic game for answer making in learning about hydrostatics

Previous research into problem solving in physics resulted in researchers introducing six epistemic games to describe the organizational structures of locally coherent resources. We present a new epistemic game—the “answer-making epistemic game”—which was identified in this paper through the analysis of interviews carried out to validate a survey focusing on students’ understanding of Archimedes’ principle and Pascal’s law. In the game, the ultimate goal is a solution to a problem posed by the survey. Students may remember or intuit an answer, then use conceptual and/or mathematical reasoning to justify it. Alternately, they may use conceptual and/or mathematical reasoning to generate an answer. We demonstrate how students generate their solutions using these two different paths and discuss some implications for instruction.

Figure 1

The answer-making e-game. Upper box: Answer leads to Justification (AJ) path. Lower box: Reasoning leads to Answer (RA) path. Shading indicates the justification and reasoning moves.

Figure 2

The boy and tub problem.