Varied reasoning schema in students' written solutions

Abstract

The Mathematization project investigates students' use of mathematical tools across the undergraduate physics curriculum. As a part of this project, we look at intermediate mechanics students' written homework solutions to understand how they use these tools in approaching traditional mechanics problems. We use a modified version of the ACER (Activation-Construction-Execution-Reflection) framework to analyze students' solutions and to identify patterns of mathematical skills used on traditional problems. We apply techniques borrowed from network analysis and the Resources Framework to build a "fingerprint" of students' mathematical tool use. In this paper, we present preliminary findings on patterns that we identified in students' problem solving.