This project aims to assess and analyze students’ sensemaking of physics phenomena throughout the academic year using carefully designed culture-based formative assessments. We collect students’ ideas about physics concepts and their cultural relevance by employing a blend of qualitative and quantitative questions. For instance, students may be prompted to construct models depicting the transportation of electricity to their homes or to describe the most energy-efficient means of commuting from home to school. Additionally, they might be asked to explore the contributions of famous physicists and the influence of cultural practices on their work. Students collaborate in groups on selected assessments in certain instances, facilitated by the teacher’s discretion.

To achieve our objectives, we closely observe and collect data on students’ responses to the assessments, which selected teachers have specially curated based on their willingness to participate and the student’s interest in the revised physics curricula. Our data collection primarily centers around secondary students, with some involvement from university or two-year college physics students, particularly those in small enrollment settings.

For data analysis, our approach encompasses multiple frameworks that aim to gain a comprehensive understanding of students’ resources and the effective use of causal reasoning to enhance the sensemaking of physics concepts. Resource theory (Hammer, 2000) provides invaluable insights into students’ knowledge reservoirs, shedding light on their existing understanding and cognitive assets. Additionally, we draw upon a sensemaking framework, particularly leveraging mechanistic reasoning (Russ et al., 2008), to explore how the selected students navigate their sense-making process, offering deeper insights into how they grasp and interpret physics ideas within the context of the revised curricula. Furthermore, our data analysis explores dual processing and mathematical sensemaking to uncover the cognitive processes underpinning students’ engagement with complex physics concepts. By combining these diverse frameworks, we aim to construct a comprehensive picture of how students engage with and comprehend physics ideas, illuminating the impact of culture-based instructional materials on their learning journey.

This research aims to comprehensively understand how culture-based instructional materials impact students’ comprehension of physics concepts and their cultural significance. By shedding light on student and teacher perspectives, we aim to ascertain the effectiveness of our approach in fostering enhanced student engagement and a deeper understanding of physics concepts and the surrounding cultural contexts.

This collaborative research endeavor brings together the expertise of Mathilda Smith, Matthew Gagea, Andrea Wooley, Delwick Nanthou, and Clausell Mathis, combining diverse insights to enrich the exploration of culture-based formative assessments and their impact on students’ sensemaking of physics ideas.