Productive resources in students’ experimental investigation of phase transition : Inquiry with a grain of salt

Critical thinking is a competence that involves several different skills, one of which is systematicity in lab practice. Recent research has called for physics education that aims for students to be more active and physics labs to focus more on developing lab skills, like systematicity, rather than reinforcing concepts. In this study, we employ social semiotics and the resources framework to study students’ potential systematicity in an inquiry-based lab activity. We add to the growing body of research on critical thinking, lab skills, and active learning by investigating the components of systematicity. We do this by analysing pairs of students with physics backgrounds and experience with the instructional approach of the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) as they carry out an inquiry-based lab activity involving adding salt to ice as the central observational experiment. Contrast is made with students that do not have experience with ISLE as they carry out the same activity. The results and subsequent analysis show that the epistemological resources exploratory mindset, procedural self-regulation, and metacognitive reflection are important for students’ engagement during productive activity. These may be some of the components of systematicity. Additionally, it is shown that students coordinate these resources with conceptual resources such as exemplars and that the resources are conveyed through particular semiotic resources. We argue that it is important for students to practice the epistemological resources for them to become systematic (thus promoting critical thinking).
Currently in review.