Congratulations to CASTeL member Dr Paul van Kampen who was announced as an awardee of the Fulbright Scholarship Awards 2024. Paul will be doing research at the University of Maine for three months, starting in May 2025. Paul and his hosts are going to look at students’ thought processes when they solve physics problems that require integration through the lens of the Dual Process Theory of Reasoning. This theory of reasoning distinguishes two kinds of reasoning: fast/heuristic/lizard brain, and slow/analytical/deliberate. You often need both: making sense of a problem often relies more heavily on heuristic reasoning, solving the problem you’ve made sense of often relies more heavily on analytical processes. There is evidence in the physics education literature that many students end up with an incorrect answer even if they get the correct answer to similar problems that require the same reasoning, because they’re satisfied with their fast response and don’t engage in analytical processes.

Paul and his hosts are going to apply this to students identifying the need for integration as a mathematical tool. Under what conditions are students who can do integration triggered to use it? How can we help students develop a sense for the need to check their responses analytically, and to conclude that integration is needed?