Investigating teachers’ and students’ experiences of quantum physics lessons: opportunities and challenges

Abstract

Background: Quantum physics has found its way into upper secondary school physics curricula worldwide. This trend coincides with increased attention for conceptual understanding in physics education in general and quantum physics education in particular. Students' conceptual difficulties of learning quantum physics are regularly reported. Little systematic attention has been paid to the opportunities and challenges teachers and students experience for teaching and learning quantum physics. Purpose: The opportunities and challenges secondary school teachers and their students experience were examined to gain insights into their perspectives teaching and learning quantum physics. These insights inform improvements in teaching and learning quantum physics at the secondary school level. Sample: Three teachers and five of each teacher's students participated in this study. Design & Methods: A context analysis was conducted to explore the experiences of the teachers and students. Teachers were individually interviewed; students were interviewed in a focus group session. The semi-structured interviews were analysed resulting in three case reports. These case reports were used to conduct a crosscase analysis to find common opportunities and challenges among teachers' and students' experiences. Results: Teachers and students felt that teachers had an important role in supporting students' understanding of quantum physics. Teachers were challenged to enthuse their students for quantum physics as they struggled to convey the relevance of the subject to their students. Freely available digital materials were considered as an opportunity to support students' conceptual understanding as they have the potential to engage students and benefit their conceptual development. Conclusion:Several implications are discussed to improve teaching and learning of quantum physics, such as opportunities for teacher professional development as well as ways to effectively use freely available digital materials.

What do quantum computing students need to know about quantum physics?

“…Overall, the results indicate that it is feasible to present students in information technology with quantum physics beyond the mathematical tools from linear algebra and computational techniques. Interestingly, the information technology students appear to share the conceptual problems and challenges in interpreting the counterintuitive quantum physics phenomena and concepts described in physics education research [11], but do not describe the mathematical formalism as any challenge. On the contrary, the mathematics is actually described as a tool that enhances understanding of the conceptual content.…”

“…Therefore it also challenges teachers and curriculum designers on how to support students' learning in quantum physics e.g. [10][11][12]. These challenges are fortified as the current technological development in quantum computing brings a new target group to the scene, namely students in information technology.…”

The design and construction of a PhET-based inquiry learning worksheet to develop understanding of the particle-in-a-box model

“…Five design principles formed the basis to the worksheet (see table 1), where each principle relates to elements the worksheet contained to facilitate the inquiry-based learning of the particle-in-box model using the 'QBS' simulation. The first three principles were based on a literature review and on a context analysis reported on elsewhere [21]. The fourth and fifth design principle were formulated after the post-hoc analysis, and are based on the design decisions made after each micro cycle and the insights obtained from the three thinking-aloud sessions.…”

Culturo-Scientific Storytelling

“…The difficulty of teaching quantum physics concepts to students in high school has been discussed extensively among the physics education community [33,[69][70][71]. There exists a well-known "paradigm shift" [72] associated with entry to the field, which leads to numerous misconceptions developing at all stages of formal education [70,72].…”