Becoming expert problem solvers : a case study in what develops and how
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- We want students to become good scientific problem solvers, yet little research has focused squarely on the development of scientific problem solving expertise. Psychologists have studied problem solving—and scientific problem solving—extensively. Frameworks have been developed to describe what people do when they solve scientific problems. But this research, and the expertise research more broadly, has stopped short of examining the full trajectory of expertise development in a scientific problem solving domain. The lack of research in this area is due, in part, to methodological challenges. Chess, violin-playing: these are isolated domains, with established measures of expertise and, consequently, are common targets of longitudinal expertise research. Data about students becoming experts in solving a class of physics or biochemistry problems is harder to come by; measures of expertise have not been established and the domains are not as isolated. The psychological laboratory offers a controlled setting, but at the cost of limited time scales and artificially created problems that can be analyzed efficiently. This dissertation uses an unusual source of data that resolves some of these methodological challenges. Citizen science is a form of scientific research that involves members of the public. In a handful of projects, citizen scientists—volunteers who contribute to this research—become experts in solving a specific kind of problem. I examine one of these projects, Eterna, in depth, drawing on qualitative evidence—records of conversations among volunteers—and quantitative evidence—records captured as volunteers solve problems. This permits access to a long period of expertise development. This approach also lets me examine development in an authentic scientific problem. I use a grounded theory approach to address three important questions: 1) the path of the developmental change—what changed into what? 2) the variation in developmental change—how do people differ in their cognitive change?, and 3) the sources of the developmental change—which variables caused the change to take place and how did they do so? The dissertation as a whole offers a new way of talking about expertise development in scientific problem solving: not as primarily the development of a domain-general construct ("scientific reasoning"), but as the product of exploration of the fundamental features in the domain. It also offers insight into the kinds of technological affordances, individual behaviors, and cognitive resources that drive expertise forward. Finally, it offers a conceptual distinction between citizen science projects, suggesting that expertise-centric projects represent an alternative research paradigm.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2018; ©2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2018 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Keep, Benjamin Ernest |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | McFarland, Daniel A |
| Thesis advisor | McFarland, Daniel A |
| Thesis advisor | Thille, Candace |
| Thesis advisor | Wieman, C. E. (Carl Edwin) |
| Degree committee member | Thille, Candace |
| Degree committee member | Wieman, C. E. (Carl Edwin) |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Education. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Benjamin Ernest Keep. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Education. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Benjamin Keep
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-SA).
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