Abstract:This study presents a review of the current state of research on teaching quantum mechanics in secondary and lower undergraduate education. A conceptual approach to quantum mechanics is being implemented in more and more introductory physics courses around the world. Because of the differences between the conceptual nature of quantum mechanics and classical physics, research on misconceptions, testing, and teaching strategies for introductory quantum mechanics is needed. For this review, 74 articles were selec… Show more
“…Generally, visualizations have been found to promote learning in physics (Lee, Linn, Varma, & Liu, ; Müller & Wiesner, ). Although working differently than they were used to, the students’ focus was still on understanding physics content, content that is generally considered to be particularly difficult to grasp because of its abstract and counterintuitive nature (Henriksen et al., ; Krijtenburg‐Lewrissa, Pol, Brinkman, & Joolingen, ). Here too, therefore, the student implied by the ReleQuant approach does not differ much from the student implied by the traditional classroom, and the actual students have little problem “doing physics” in this way: In this topic I felt it worked better, actually, to be able to visualize it.…”
Calls for renewal of physics education include more varied learning activities and increased focus on qualitative understanding and history and philosophy of science (HPS) aspects. We have studied an innovative approach implementing such features in quantum physics in traditional upper secondary physics classrooms in Norway. Data consists of 11 focus groups with 58 participants from 11 physics classes, collected in 2013-2016 and analyzed thematically. Using the the implied student (Ulriksen, 2009) as an analytical lens, we study the experiences of actual physics students against the student "implied" by the innovative approach. The findings suggest that students struggled where the new approach holds implicit expectations that differ greatly from how students are expected to "do physics" in traditional classrooms. For example, students found it difficult to monitor their performance in the absence of calculations and factual answers.However, students easily adopted visualizations as a new tool for reaching the familiar goal of content knowledge. HPS aspects motivated students, but were not necessarily seen as learning goals in their own right. There is a need for better alignment between learning activities, learning goals and assessment in innovations, and for making implicit expectations explicit so that students know what "doing physics" successfully entails.
“…Generally, visualizations have been found to promote learning in physics (Lee, Linn, Varma, & Liu, ; Müller & Wiesner, ). Although working differently than they were used to, the students’ focus was still on understanding physics content, content that is generally considered to be particularly difficult to grasp because of its abstract and counterintuitive nature (Henriksen et al., ; Krijtenburg‐Lewrissa, Pol, Brinkman, & Joolingen, ). Here too, therefore, the student implied by the ReleQuant approach does not differ much from the student implied by the traditional classroom, and the actual students have little problem “doing physics” in this way: In this topic I felt it worked better, actually, to be able to visualize it.…”
Calls for renewal of physics education include more varied learning activities and increased focus on qualitative understanding and history and philosophy of science (HPS) aspects. We have studied an innovative approach implementing such features in quantum physics in traditional upper secondary physics classrooms in Norway. Data consists of 11 focus groups with 58 participants from 11 physics classes, collected in 2013-2016 and analyzed thematically. Using the the implied student (Ulriksen, 2009) as an analytical lens, we study the experiences of actual physics students against the student "implied" by the innovative approach. The findings suggest that students struggled where the new approach holds implicit expectations that differ greatly from how students are expected to "do physics" in traditional classrooms. For example, students found it difficult to monitor their performance in the absence of calculations and factual answers.However, students easily adopted visualizations as a new tool for reaching the familiar goal of content knowledge. HPS aspects motivated students, but were not necessarily seen as learning goals in their own right. There is a need for better alignment between learning activities, learning goals and assessment in innovations, and for making implicit expectations explicit so that students know what "doing physics" successfully entails.
“…Because quantum mechanics entails fundamental changes in the way the physical world is understood and conflicts with students' classical thinking (Karakostas & Hadzidaki, 2005), there is need for a research-based instructional strategy that aims for conceptual understanding, comprising the key topics of quantum mechanics (Krijtenburg-Lewerissa, Pol, Brinkman, & van Joolingen, 2017). However, there is no generally accepted opinion on what to teach in introductory quantum mechanics courses, and a wide variety of topics has been explored for use in a more conceptual approach to quantum mechanics.…”
This article describes a Delphi study aiming to investigate which quantum mechanics topics experts consider to be important to teach at the secondary level, and what arguments these experts give. A series of three questionnaires was administered to experts in the fields of quantum physics, mathematics, chemistry and biophysics (n = 17, 12, 11 for the first, second, and third questionnaires, respectively; the number of participants changed due to attrition). Several experts from this group (n = 9) were also interviewed. Results show that there is consensus on the topics considered to be important, i.e. duality, wave functions and atoms. Experts mainly based their topic ranking on relations between concepts, and on what quantum mechanics topics they consider to be fundamental. The topics that were considered less important were often described as too difficult or too complex.
ARTICLE HISTORY
“…In upper secondary physics courses, concepts like the wave-particle duality and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are taught qualitatively without complex mathematics (Stadermann et al, 2019). Such an introduction to QP is fascinating for students (Bungum et al, 2018), but also challenging to learn and to teach (Krijtenburg-Lewerissa et al, 2017): QP phenomena are not only different from what students experience in the visible world, but many QP principles might not fit with their ideas about physics. For example, when QP is introduced with the so-called standard (Copenhagen) interpretation, students have to abandon their diligently constructed deterministic and realistic worldview of Newtonian physics to predict and explain the outcome of QP experiments, (Johnston et al, 1998;Ke et al, 2005).…”
Epistemological and philosophical issues have always been relevant for the foundations of physics, but usually do not find their way into secondary physics classrooms. As an exception to this, the strangeness of quantum physics (QP) naturally evokes philosophical questions, and learners might have to change their ideas about the nature of science (NOS). In this exploratory mixedmethod study, we examined possible connections between upper secondary school students' QP content knowledge and their ideas about relevant aspects of NOS in the context of QP. We administered a QP concept test to 240 Dutch secondary students (age 17-19) after they attended classes on QP without a focus on NOS. Next, we selected 24 students with a range of test scores for individual semi-structured interviews about their understanding of wave-particle duality and their views on five aspects of NOS. Contrary to NOS studies in other contexts, the interviews showed that all 24 students had well-informed NOS views in the context of QP. We contend that NOS in QP might be more easily accessible than in many other contexts. Our results suggest that QP can have an additional role in the physics curriculum by enhancing students' understanding of NOS.
ARTICLE HISTORY
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