How Students use their Conceptual Resources and Mechanistic Reasoning to Sensemake about Electric Circuits

The sensemaking process, in which students recognize an inconsistency or gap in their thinking and work to resolve that gap, is one way of modeling how science learning happens. As an attempt to understand students' learning of current flow in circuits, we analyzed a discussion amongst three undergraduate physics students who were attempting to formulate an understanding of how charges move within a circuit depending on the number and orientation of resistors. Students were attempting to solve a problem set designed to understand their conceptual resources around current flow in circuits. Discourse analysis was done to understand students' vexation points – the moments where they articulate that something doesn't "make sense", along with moments of resolution in their understanding of charge movement in a circuit. We analyzed students' conversations to understand how students' conceptual resources about charge and current flow and their mechanistic reasoning about circuits may support their sensemaking process.