Barriers to student epistemic agency during collaboration in introductory labs

In group work, the way in which individual group members frame the work they do together influences the group's engagement with the task. Prior work studying group behavior in introductory physics labs has prized framings that promote student epistemic agency, in which students view their own sensemaking as valid and useful for successfully carrying out their task. However, barriers exist to groups consistently taking up these high epistemic agency framings. To explore an example of these barriers, we present a case of three students working together on an introductory physics lab in which two group members expressed a desire to shift their group toward a higher epistemic agency framing, but failed to do so in practice. We examine the specific dynamics present within the student group that prevent the group from shifting into higher epistemic agency framings, and argue that student perceptions of their group members' framings of the task can serve to "trap" members of the group in lower epistemic agency framings.