Analysis of secondary school quantum physics curricula of 15 different countries: Different perspectives on a challenging topic

Abstract

Secondary school level quantum physics (QP) courses have recently been implemented in the national curricula of many countries. QP gives opportunities to acquaint students with more recent physics and its applications and to discuss aspects of the nature of science. Research has shown that QP is a challenging area for students. Because the inclusion of QP in national curricula is rather new in most countries, it is interesting to compare QP curricula from these countries to make the choices by curriculum designers visible. In this study, we provide a detailed overview of QP courses from fifteen countries. We collected and analyzed official curriculum documents to identify key items present in most curricula. Our inventory identifies a shared current core curriculum of QP which contains the following seven main categories: discrete atomic energy levels, interactions between light and matter, wave-particle duality, de Broglie wavelength, technical applications, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and the probabilistic nature of QP. We also found differences in the focus of the listed topics of certain countries, which indicate different views on teaching QP and might inspire curriculum designers struggling with QP. For instance, challenging items like QP interpretations or epistemological aspects of QP are taught only in a few countries. Although research suggests that epistemological aspects help students to comprehend novel QP concepts, many countries do not explicitly include these in the curriculum. We provide reasons and suggestions for this.

Secondary school students’ views of nature of science in quantum physics

“…Scientists use their creativity and imagination. In an international comparison of curricula, five NOS aspects were identified as particularly relevant for teaching and learning QP (Stadermann et al, 2019). Table 1 illustrates the connection between these NOS aspects and QP with some examples, and it summarises desired and undesired views of NOS for the understanding of QP.…”

“…To avoid spending much lesson time on administering the test and enabling fast data processing and feedback, we designed an online multiple-choice test. QP curriculum items in the Netherlands are similar to those in other countries (Stadermann et al, 2019). Our test covers seven main themes: light as wave (interference and diffraction), interaction between radiation and matter (energy absorption and emission in atoms), photoelectric effect, matter waves (de Broglie relationship, interference in the double-slit experiment), Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, the quantum model of atoms (particle in a box), and tunnelling.…”

“…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.…”

Effects of instruction on students’ overconfidence in introductory quantum mechanics

“…In this study we will focus only on school teaching experiences. QM has been only recently introduced at the high school level in Italy as well as in other countries' physics curricula [44]. However, at high school, several basic aspects of QM are targeted also in chemistry classes before being addressed in the physics course, even though the scope and formalism remain quite different.…”

Problem-based structure for a teaching-learning sequence to overcome students’ difficulties when learning about atomic spectra

“…The study of quantum physics usually begins by analyzing the phenomena of emission and absorption of electromagnetic radiation. Actually, a recent analysis of secondary school quantum physics curricula of 15 different countries has shown that "discrete energy levels" and "interaction between light and matter" are two of the most commonly occurring items [6]. One of the introductory quantum physics goals is that students grasp a quantum model of emission and absorption of radiation in order to explain the emission and absorption spectra, in terms of both frequencies and spectral line intensities.…”