Using dual-process theories as a lens to explore reasoning trajectories taken by students responding to physics questions

A growing body of research has found that students who have successfully applied relevant physics concepts and skills (mindware) to one physics question may perform inconsistently on an analogous question, even after research-based instruction. These inconsistencies can be explained through dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR). According to DPToR, there are a variety of ways in which processes 1 and 2 may be engaged and interact while students are thinking about the physics question, and this leads to many possible reasoning trajectories. While increased attention to these trajectories may help improve the effectiveness of instructional interventions, existing (large N) methodologies do not allow for the systematic identification and characterization of such trajectories. In this study, students were first given a screening-target pair of questions, with the screening question providing an independent measure of mindware and the target question focusing on the same physics concept, but often eliciting intuitive, incorrect responses. The question pair was then followed by a set of metacognitive prompts in which students were asked to reflect on their reasoning on the target question. The focus of this ongoing work is to explore how student reasoning trajectories may be impacted by differences in the nature of the target question (and the associated intuitive models generated by process 1). In this talk, we present recent results and discuss implications for instructional materials.