2015/04/08 by Emily Marshman, Chandralekha Singh · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Career Development and Diversity #Experimental and Theoretical Physics Studies #Face (sociological concept) #Formalism (music) #GRASP #Leverage (statistics) #Parallels #Physics education #Quantum #Science Education and Pedagogy #physics.ed-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevstper.11.020119
arxiv created 2015/04/08 · openalex publication_date 2015/09/23 · arxiv updated 2016/02/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Upper Division Physics Courses.] Compared with introductory physics, relatively little is known about the development of expertise in advanced physics courses, especially in the case of quantum mechanics. Here, we describe a framework for understanding the patterns of student reasoning difficulties and how students develop expertise in quantum mechanics. The framework posits that the challenges many students face in developing expertise in quantum mechanics are analogous to the challenges introductory students face in developing expertise in introductory classical mechanics. This framework incorporates both the effects of diversity in upper-level students' prior preparation, goals, and motivation in general (i.e., the facts that even in upper-level courses, students may be inadequately prepared, have unclear goals, and have insufficient motivation to excel) as well as the "paradigm shift" from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics. The framework is based on empirical investigations demonstrating that the patterns of reasoning, problem-solving, and self-monitoring difficulties in quantum mechanics bear a striking resemblance to those found in introductory classical mechanics. Examples from research in quantum mechanics and introductory classical mechanics are discussed to illustrate how the patterns of difficulties are analogous as students learn to unpack the respective principles and grasp the formalism in each knowledge domain during the development of expertise. Embracing such a framework and contemplating the parallels between the difficulties in these two knowledge domains can enable researchers to leverage the extensive literature for introductory physics education research to guide the design of teaching and learning tools for helping students develop expertise in quantum mechanics.