For many students, learning quantum atomic models raises difficulties that result from the major differences between quantum-mechanical perspectives and the classical physics view. After being taught the probability atomic model, which is traditionally introduced in Germany in upper secondary school (age 18-19), the understandings of the overwhelming majority of students differ significantly from the intended learning outcomes. An alternative atomic model, the descriptive quantum atomic model `Electronium', is outlined in this paper, and the way in which it is intended to support students in learning quantum-mechanical concepts is discussed.
This is the second of two papers focusing on the quantum atomic model 'Electronium'. The 'Bremen teaching approach', in which this model is used, is outlined and an analysis of the learning of two students as they progress through the teaching unit is presented. Finally an argument is presented to support the assertion that the Electronium model can be considered to be a successful teaching tool.
International audienceIn 1991, an international workshop held in Bremen was working on " Research in Physics Learning-Theoretical Issues and Empirical Studies " (Duit, Goldberg, Niedderer 1992). The intention of this workshop was to develop a new research goal, which was to study learning processes with data from during the learning process. The main point, which often makes learning process studies very important and interesting is the following: Students' actual constructions are often different from taught knowledge. In other words: there is a gap between what we teach and what is learnt (McDermott 1991), the knowledge to be taught is different from students' steps of learning (Tiberghien 1997). The students undertake a cognitive development, which leads them towards constructing certain "intermediate conceptions" (see below) corresponding to their cognitive structure (Niedderer 2001). In this paper, we are presenting some theoretical and methodological issues together with some results from new studies (Givry 2003; Budde 2004). 2. Theoretical framework Conceptions and expressed ideas Many authors use the term "conception" to denote their basic concept of thinking and learning (see Duit 2004). A conception is seen as a hypothetical set of statements, skills, procedures, that the researcher attributes to one or more students in order to account for students' behaviour in a set of given situations (Tiberghien 1997). Here, we distinguish between two cases: (1) One is to consider that a conception intends to be part of modelling students' mind. It is a construction of a researcher to describe typical use of elements of knowledge and ways of thinking of students. A conception has to be stable and must appear in more than one context and point in time. (2) The other is to consider that the researcher infers only ideas, which are expressed in the students' productions without making hypotheses on students' mind (Givry and Roth in press). These inferences will be called " expressed-ideas " to distinguish them from the previous approach. These two approaches show that, even if the points of view on the students' mind modelling are different, the analysis and the results on learning are compatible and mutually reinforced. Both approaches are inferred from students' productions (utterances, gestures, writing) by the researcher and can show some stability over time (Niedderer 2001) and through several situations (Givry 2003). The set of these situations represent their domain of validity, this domain can be reduced to a single situation or be stable in several situations. In both cases there is a construction of a researcher, which describes the core of several ideas of students in the researchers own words using the most distinctive features of those ideas for this description. This procedure is also aiming at a considerable reduction of data, describing the core of a set of ideas in a set of situations with one conception. Learning processes Often, learning processes 1 can be represented as a sequence of conceptions dev...
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