Analizing high school students' problem solving through their personal epistemologies

COLEONI, ENRIQUE ANDRÉS; PEREA, MARÍA ANDREA; BUTELER, LAURA MARÍA

Latin American Journal of Physics Education

Instituto Politécnico Nacional & Latin American Physics Education Network

Año: 2014 vol. 8 p. 3 - 12

1870-9095

A case study is presented in which the epistemic aspects of three students? productions during problem solving are analyzed. These students address a non-instructional Mechanics problem. The theoretical framework adopted is that of Cognitive Resources, which assumes that students? cognitive activities are epistemicaly framed via the activation of epistemic resources. The analysis shows that students? epistemic frames can account for certain characteristics of their reasonings. Furthermore, the epistemic analysis offered gives insight into how they are able to carry out metacognitive observations on their own reasoning. Regarding the characteristics in these students personal epistemologies, they exhibit an epistemic sophistication that compares to that of more advanced (university) students reported in the literature.