Exploring how interventions aligned with dual-process theories support student reasoning

Research suggests that poor student performance on certain physics questions may stem, at least in part, from the nature of human reasoning itself. While students may demonstrate that they possess the requisite knowledge and skills (mindware) to reason correctly on one question, they may abandon that same line of reasoning on an analogous question containing a salient distracting feature. As part of a larger effort to investigate and support student reasoning in physics by leveraging dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR), we have been working to identify and more thoroughly characterize factors that may impact how students respond to DPToR-aligned interventions. There are many factors of interest, including mindware, cognitive reflection skills, and the specific reasoning trajectories of students as they engage with the physics question prior to the intervention. In this talk, we describe our efforts to characterize some of these factors and relate them to the effectiveness of specific interventions.