Abstract
[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.Received 29 September 2014DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.11.020119This article is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical Society
Highlights
A solid grasp of the fundamental principles of quantum physics is essential for many scientists and engineers
We discuss the reasons for the diversity in the student population and describe how the novel nature of the quantum paradigm makes learning challenging in ways that are analogous to the challenges introductory students face in developing expertise in classical mechanics
While the diversity in students’ preparation, goals, and motivations may partly account for the difficulties in learning introductory classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, difficulties may be exacerbated by the fact that the paradigms of classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are significantly different than the paradigms that students in the respective courses have previously learned
Summary
A solid grasp of the fundamental principles of quantum physics is essential for many scientists and engineers. Few investigations have focused on the nature of expertise of advanced physics students and strategies that can be used in upperlevel courses to help them build a robust knowledge structure and develop their problem-solving, reasoning, and metacognitive skills [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. We discuss the reasons for the diversity in the student population (i.e., there are students with inadequate preparation, unclear goals, and insufficient motivation for excelling in the course) and describe how the novel nature of the quantum paradigm makes learning challenging in ways that are analogous to the challenges introductory students face in developing expertise in classical mechanics.
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