How students justify their knowledge in the Investigative Science Learning Environment.

This paper presents a preliminary investigation into how introductory physics students justify their knowledge in an investigative science learning environment (ISLE). ISLE attempts to help students learn physics using the same strategies that physicists use to construct their knowledge. A coding schema, from naïve to scientific knowing, is used to analyze students' justification of knowing, probed by open-ended and multiple-choice ‘convincing’ questions. Results of the study support the assertion that students' epistemological beliefs are made as ‘context-sensitive resources.’ The results further suggest that the way that students develop the resources in a particular context may affect their justification of knowledge. ISLE helps students not only understand the concepts, gain the knowledge of the experimental evidence supporting the concepts, but also may enrich their epistemological development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]