Splits in students’ beliefs about learning classical and quantum physics

Abstract

Background: While there has been increasing recognition of the importance of attending to students' views about what counts as knowing and learning a STEM field, surveys that measure these "epistemological" beliefs are often used in ways that implicitly assume the fields, e.g., "physics," to be a single domain about which students might have sophisticated or naïve beliefs. We demonstrate this is not necessarily the case and argue for attending to possible differences in students' epistemological beliefs across different sub-domains of physics. In modern physics and quantum mechanics courses for engineering and physics students, we administered a set of modified Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) items. Each selected item was turned into two items, with the word "physics" changed to "classical physics" in one and "quantum physics" in the other. Results: We found significant splits between students' survey responses about classical vs. quantum physics on some items, both pre-and post-instruction. In classical physics, as compared to quantum physics, students were more likely to report the salience of real-world connections and the possibility of combining mathematical and conceptual reasoning during problem solving. Conclusions: These findings suggest that attending to sub-domain specificity of students' beliefs about physics can be fruitful and ought to influence our instructional choices.

Students’ implicit epistemologies when working at the intersection of engineering and the arts

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Mathematical sense-making in quantum mechanics: An initial peek

“…So, in this segment, we see Fred invoking an epistemological view about quantum mechanics-"[it] doesn't make sense a lot of the time"-as a warrant for dismissing their physical intuition when it conflicts with their counterintuitive equation-based conclusion. While this attitude is sometimes expressed by introductory students about physics in general, it is also exhibited in ways specific to quantum mechanics even among more advanced students and experts [4,44,45]. Reasonable physicists can disagree about the extent to which quantum mechanics doesn't make sense and therefore how carefully one should question and recheck a given unexpected conclusion derived from mathematics.…”

Student reasoning about sources of experimental measurement uncertainty in quantum versus classical mechanics

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