# Toolboxes and handing students a hammer: The effects of cueing and instruction on getting students to think critically

## TL;DR

This study examines how instructional design and cueing influence undergraduate physics students' critical thinking, showing that structured inquiry improves reasoning but can be hindered by procedural cues.

## Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of SQILabs in enhancing critical thinking and analyzes how cues impact student reasoning and epistemological framing.

## Key findings

- SQILabs improved students' reasoning about data
- Procedural cueing reduced critical thinking behaviors
- Behavioral changes linked to epistemological framing

## Abstract

Developing critical thinking skills is a common goal of an undergraduate physics curriculum. How do students make sense of evidence and what do they do with it? In this study, we evaluated students' critical thinking behaviors through their written notebooks in an introductory physics laboratory course. We compared student behaviors in the Structured Quantitative Inquiry Labs (SQILabs) curriculum to a control group and evaluated the fragility of these behaviors through procedural cueing. We found that the SQILabs were generally effective at improving the quality of students' reasoning about data and making decisions from data. These improvements in reasoning and sensemaking were thwarted, however, by a procedural cue. We describe these changes in behavior through the lens of epistemological frames and task orientation, invoked by the instructional moves.