PHYSICS PROBLEM SOLVING

(^) Claim. It is interesting to hypothesize that if their Claims were less correct, their
episodes would have extended far beyond the original Claim and would contain more
Modified Claims and perhaps Alternate Claims. I probably would not have then found
their arguments ending with a Claim, but rather found their episodes beginning with a
Claim and followed by elaboration.
Second, it is interesting that groups 3B and 7A are both groups of four and
typically do not use Alternate Claims. It may be that the challenging aspect of an
Alternate Claim is inhibited in a problem-solving group larger than three. This
hypothesis is consistent with prior cooperative group problem-solving research (Heller
and Hollabaugh, 1992). However, Group 2A, another group of four, typically does use
Alternate Claims and I can not generalize this hypothesis on the basis of two out of three
groups. This possible inhibiting of challenges in argument co-construction in groups of
four, however, warrants further investigation.