Student sensemaking on electrostatics problems involving the method of images through the lens of epistemic game framework

Abstract: Understanding the mechanisms of student sensemaking while navigating the physics problem-solving process can play an important role in developing approaches to helping students become proficient problem solvers. Since most prior studies on student sensemaking in physics have focused on introductory physics, this study sheds light on a relatively unexplored research area involving the sensemaking of advanced physics students. We conducted individual interviews with graduate students to investigate their sensemaking while solving upper-level undergraduate electrostatics problems in the context of the method of images. Analysis through the lens of the epistemic game framework proposed by Tuminaro and Redish shows that the central part of student sensemaking can be mapped on to the Pictorial Analysis game with other epistemic games also playing a role, but the ontological components of some games require refinement. The study involves an in-depth comparison of sensemaking on related but distinct problems for individual graduate students and comparison between multiple students solving the same problems. It provides insights into how graduate students transfer and translate strategies between different problems while sensemaking. Graduate students showed persistence in activating different knowledge resources and consistent use of reasoning primitives across different problems sensemaking. The study investigated the impact of small nudging and scaffolding that resulted in significant improvements in the problem-solving approaches of graduate students. Another novel finding is that problem-solving approaches of graduate students significantly improved with successive attempts and multiple drawings for the same problem and across problems.