As part of a research study on student reasoning in quantum mechanics, we examine students' use of ontologies, or the way students' categorically organize entities they are reasoning about. In analyzing three episodes of focus group discussions with modern physics students, we present evidence of the dynamic nature of ontologies, and refine prior theoretical frameworks for thinking about dynamic ontologies. We find that in a given reasoning episode ontologies can be dynamic in construction (referring to when the reasoner constructs the ontologies) or application (referring to which ontologies are applied in a given reasoning episode). In our data, we see instances of students flexibly switching back and forth between parallel stable structures as well as constructing and negotiating new ontologies in the moment. Methodologically, we use a collective conceptual blending framework as an analytic tool for capturing student reasoning in groups. In this research, we value the messiness of student reasoning and argue that reasoning in a tentative manner can be productive for students learning quantum mechanics. As such, we shift away from a binary view of student learning which sees students as either having the correct answer or not.

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The ontologies students use-their conceptions about the nature of entities-impact the way they learn physics and reason through physics problems. We investigate students' capacities for flexible use of ontologies in a modern physics context, focusing on students' reasoning around two quantum entities (photons and electrons) for three canonical topics in introductory quantum physics (double slit experiment, Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and quantum tunneling). We present a description of a full framework to describe and distinguish between different kinds of dynamic ontologies. The framework identifies possible ontological structures in individual reasoning episodes, three of which we identify in our data set: unitary (applying a single stable ontology), parallel (switching back and forth between multiple ontologies), and blended (constructing a novel ontology by blending two or more input ontologies). These different ontological structures are applied to the specific ontologies used (e.g., wave or particle) for the specific entity (e.g., photon or electron). We demonstrate the utility of the framework by coding individual responses from a representative sample of an introductory modern physics course to an array of written and multiple-choice questions on homework, exams, and pre-and postsurveys. We present and explore the patterns of use of ontologies across the three topical contexts and these various modalities. We demonstrate that students use a variety of ontologies and ontological structures across entities and topic areas, even when not explicitly prompted to do so. In addition to providing evidence of students' capacities for flexible use of ontologies, we find that the wording and framing of the question prompts impact students' use of ontologies. Expanding on the aggregate data, we engage in analysis of a few notable examples to demonstrate how the wording, framing, and content of prompts can intersect to collectively impact students' use of ontologies and ontological structures.

Writing is an integral part of the process of science. In the undergraduate physics curriculum, the most common place that students engage with scientific writing is in lab classes, typically through lab notebooks, reports, and proposals. There has not been much research on why and how we include writing in physics lab classes, and instructors may incorporate writing for a variety of reasons. Through a broader study of multiweek projects in advanced lab classes, we have developed a framework for thinking about and understanding the role of writing in lab classes. This framework defines and describes the breadth of goals for incorporating writing in lab classes, and is a tool we can use to begin to understand why, and subsequently how, we teach scientific writing in physics.