Qualitative Analysis of Students' Epistemic Framing Surrounding Instructor's Interaction

Abstract

As part of a larger study of exploring students’ problem solving in small groups, we investigated how the instructor influences students’ epistemic framing in an upper-division electromagnetism class. We use the CAMP (Conceptual, Algorithmic, Mathematics, Physics) framework to investigate the dynamics of students’ frames surrounding their interaction with the instructor, tracking frame triplets before, during and after the instructor’s intervention during tutorial sessions. We present a case study of one such triplet (AP, CP, AP) by qualitatively analyzing student interaction with the instructor. Careful examination indicates that disagreements during the interaction necessitated the instructor to initiate conceptual discussion thereby causing a frame shift from an algorithmic to a conceptual frame.