From Everyday Life Experiences to Physics Understanding Occurring in Small Group Work with Context Rich Problems During Introductory Physics Work at University

How do students bridge everyday life views into physics understanding? We report from in-depth analysis of one group of four students, video-recorded over 135 min solving a context rich problem (CRP). Through transcripts of the group’s conversations and from flow-charts made of the group talk we have categorised how students’ experiences develop into physics reasoning. The conversations in the cooperative group are sometimes carried out by “exploratory talks”, but there are also parts of the conversation where the students develop their own thoughts without response from the others. Some evidence is given of: 1) how the students use exploratory talks to reach consensus about the boundary conditions of the task; 2) how the students state the problem more precisely by starting to talk about experiences they have had and to use their experiences as arguments, and 3) how individual questions are formulated in a process of meaning making. We find in this case-study that students’ personal everyday life experience develops into physics reasoning during group talk. We argue accordingly for more time in the physics classroom to solve open ended physics problems which promote group discussions taking departure from own experiences and enhance physics understanding.