Not engaging with problems in the lab: Students’ navigation of conflicting data and models

Abstract

With the adoption of instructional laboratories that require students to make their own decisions, there is a need to better understand students’ activities as they make sense of their data and decide how to proceed. In particular, understanding when students do not engage productively with unexpected data may provide insights into how to better support students in more open-ended labs. We examine video and audio data from groups within a lab session where students were expected to find data inconsistent with the predictions of two models. In prior work, we examined the actions of the four groups that productively grapple with this designed problem. Here, we analyze the engagement of the three groups that do not. We conducted three phases of analysis: (1) documenting large scale behaviors and time spent in on-topic discussion, (2) analyzing interactions with the teaching assistant, and (3) identifying students’ framing—their expectations for what is taking place—when they were discussing their data. Our phase 1 and 2 analyses show only minor differences between the groups that engaged with the problem and those that did not. Our phase 3 analysis demonstrated that the groups that did not engage with the problem framed the lab activity as about confirming a known result or as a series of hoops to jump through to fulfill assignment requirements. Implications for instruction include supporting teaching assistants to attend to students’ framing and agency within laboratory classrooms.