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[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research.] The ability to relate physical concepts and phenomena to multiple mathematical representations—and to move fluidly between these representations—is a critical outcome expected of physics instruction. In upper-division quantum mechanics, students must work with multiple symbolic notations, including some that they have not previously encountered. Thus, developing the ability to generate and translate expressions in these notations is of great importance, and the extent to which students can relate these expressions to physical quantities and phenomena is crucial to understand. To investigate student understanding of the expressions used in these notations and the ways they relate, clinical think-aloud interviews were conducted with students enrolled in an upper-division quantum mechanics course. Analysis of these interviews used the symbolic forms framework to determine the ways that participants interpret and reason about these expressions. Multiple symbolic forms—internalized connections between symbolic templates and their conceptual interpretations—were identified in both Dirac and wave function notations, suggesting that students develop an understanding of expressions for probability both in terms of their constituent pieces and as larger composite expressions.
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Laminated Layers of Abstraction in Physics Students’ Gesture
Gestures play a key role for physicists and physics students in representing physics entities, processes, and systems. One affordance of gesture is the ability to laminate or layer together representations of concrete physical features (e.g., objects and their interactions) and symbolic representations (e.g., coordinate systems) to make sense of and model physical scenarios. Using interaction analysis, we illustrate how students can laminate these different layers of abstraction together in gesture to generate complex explanations to solve physics problems. We argue that laminating different layers of abstraction (both the symbolic and concrete) constitute a key form of representational competence in physics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2201821
- PAR ID:
- 10513802
- Editor(s):
- Lindgren, R; Asino, T; Kyza, E A; Looi, C-K; Keifert, D T; Suarez, E
- Publisher / Repository:
- International Society of the Learning Sciences
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences ICLS 2024
- ISSN:
- 1819-0138
- ISBN:
- 979-8-9906980-0-0
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1814 to 1817
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Buffalo, NY
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2024.200841
