Epistemic stances toward group work in learning physics: Interactions between epistemology and social dynamics in a collaborative problem solving context

TL;DR

This paper explores how students' beliefs about knowledge creation in group work interact with social dynamics, affecting collaboration quality in physics learning contexts.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of epistemic stances toward group work and analyzes their interaction with social dynamics through a detailed case study.

Findings

Misaligned epistemic stances influence social positioning within groups.

Understanding these interactions can help improve equitable and productive group work.

Epistemic stances are linked to how students perceive knowledge sharing in physics collaboration.

Abstract

As educators we often ask our physics students to work in groups---on tutorials, during in-class discussions, and on homework, projects, or exams. Researchers have documented the benefits of group work for students' conceptual mastery and problem solving skills, and have worked to optimize the productivity of group work by assigning roles and composing groups based on performance levels or gender. However, it is less common for us as a physics education research community to attend to the social dynamics and interactions among students within a collaborative setting, or to address students' views about group work. In this paper, we define \textit{epistemic stances toward group work}: stances towards what it means to generate and apply knowledge in a group. Through a case study analysis of a collaborative problem solving session among four physics students, we investigate how epistemic stances toward group work interact with social dynamics. We find that misalignment of stances between students can inform, and be informed by, the social positioning of group members. Understanding these fine-grained interactions is one way to begin to understand how to support students in engaging in productive and equitable group work.