Theoretical exploration of task features that facilitate student sensemaking in physics

Abstract: Assessment tasks provide opportunities for students to make sense of novel contexts in light of their existing ideas. Consequently, investigations in physics education research have extensively developed and analyzed assessments that support students sensemaking of their surrounding world. In the current work, we complement contemporary efforts by theoretically exploring assessment task features that increase the likelihood of students sensemaking in physics. We identify the task features by first noting the salient characteristics of the sensemaking process as described in the science education literature. We then leverage existing theoretical ideas from cognitive psychology, education, and philosophy of science in unpacking the task features which elicit the characteristics of sensemaking. Furthermore, we leverage Conjecture Mapping -- a framework from design-based research -- to articulate how the proposed task features elicit the desired outcome of sensemaking. We argue that to promote sensemaking, tasks should cue students to unpack the underlying mechanism of a real-world phenomenon by coordinating multiple representations and by physically interpreting mathematical expressions. Major contributions of this work include: adopting an agent-based approach to explore task features; operationalizing conjecture mapping in the context of task design in physics; leveraging cross-disciplinary theoretical ideas to promote sensemaking in physics; and introducing a methodology extendable to unpack task features which can elicit other valued epistemic practices such as modeling and argumentation.