Investigating the Complexity of Student Modelling by Coordinating a Diversity of Research Perspectives

In this chapter, we present a collaborative, post hoc analysis of a pivotal episode in the work of one group of US middle-school students as they engaged in a model-eliciting activity. A central feature of this collaborative analysis was the identification and elaboration of three perspectives through iterative interpretation of video data: representations, mathematical uncertainty, and idea development. Coordinating these perspectives highlighted a cyclical pattern in the students’ progression through the modelling activity, as they encountered and managed mathematical uncertainty and expressed their developing ideas with physical materials and representations. We view this work as a researcher-level modelling effort, to synthesise independent analytical approaches, develop shared perspectives, and construct an explanatory account of the flow of students’ collective thinking as they solved a rich modelling task.