PHYSICS PROBLEM SOLVING

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“construct” their argument out of prior knowledge and ideas that surface in the course of
the discussion. Co-construction means the group members are doing this together.
Brown and Palinscar suggest using a systematic argument structure to describe
the co-construction process.
“Because these tasks [i.e., co-construction] argument, systematic examination of relations between the discourse form and the result in a great deal of spontaneous
type of posttest improvement should be possible. Such fine-grained analysis of
what happens in group discussions and what type of learning occurs are badly
needed.” (Brown and Palinscar,1989; p. 408)
Brown and Palincsar point to the argument^ structure proposed by Stephen Toulmin as a
useful analysis tool in contexts such as cooperative groups (Toulmin, 1958, 1990;
Toulmin, Rieke, and Janik, 1984; Nickerson, Perkins, and Smith, 1985). Toulmin’s
structure is in keeping with the goal of a fine-grained analysis of the cooperative group
process: “An argument is like an organism. It has both a gross, anatomical structure and
a finer, as-it-were physiological one... The time has come to change the focus of our
inquiry, and to concentrate on this finer level” (Toulmin, 1958, 1990, p. 94). Although
arguments in different scientific fields may differ in fundamental ways, there is a
commonality in the construction of an argument. In Toulmin's structure there are
grounds, claims, warrants, backings, modalities and rebuttals. In developing his ideas he
uses examples from both jurisprudence (“substantial arguments”) and mathematics
(“analytic arguments”).
A claim is a fundamental assertion that is the goal or endpoint of the argument.
Grounds or data, are the particulars of a situation that support the claim. When solving a
physics problem , the grounds are the data given in the problem statement. In many
argumentative contexts, one may never make explicit just how the grounds support the