Abstract
Decades of cognitive psychology research have demonstrated that reasoning and decision making are often influenced by strong tendencies for people to reply quickly, use the most available information, and make unwitting assumptions and observations aligned with beliefs and experience. While these tendencies may optimize every-day living and survival, they run counter to dispositions necessary for scientific understanding and inquiry. I show empirical examples in the context of physics content commonly seen in classrooms. Some examples are based on simple conceptual questions, while other examples ask students to make inferences from tables of data in cases with or without significant prior beliefs about the data. The question is, how do we negotiate these natural and inevitable ``cognitive contours'' to help students more effectively learn science and reason scientifically? Because of the inescapable interaction and ambiguous distinction between rapid, automatic intuitions and slower, deliberate reasoning, one possibility may be to improve fluency in basic STEM skills that are involved in more complex reasoning and problem solving. I will report on our success in improving accuracy and fluency in some of these basic skills via the implementation of carefully designed, spaced, and interleaved mastery practice course assignments online. But open questions remain as to which skills to improve and the precise role that fluency with basic skills plays in success with tasks that are regarded as involving scientific reasoning or problem solving.
Funding for this research was provided by the Center for Emergent Materials: an NSF MRSEC under Award Number DMR-1420451.
