Countering pseudoscientific misinformation is an important goal for outreach initiatives, especially when directed to young students. Quantum physics and quantum technology, due to their perceived mysterious character, are especially prone to being communicated, intentionally or otherwise, in a deformed way which may induce severe misconceptions, make the public vulnerable to scams and deceptions, or even pave the way to anti-scientific beliefs. In this paper we report on the two-year results of a summer school on quantum information science for secondary school students, held with the support of the Italian NQSTI - National Quantum Science and Technology Institute. We concentrate here only on results demonstrating the changes in students' attitudes toward pseudoscientific conceptions of quantum science and technology, as measured by a specially tailored questionnaire - the PSEUDO-QM scale. Our preliminary results show that meaningful conceptual instruction about quantum physics and quantum technology may not only be beneficial for the need for a future quantum workforce, but also significantly reduce the extent of pseudo-scientific conceptions about quantum theory.
Countering pseudoscientific misinformation is an important goal for outreach initiatives, especially when directed to young students. Quantum physics and quantum technology, due to their perceived mysterious character, are especially prone to being communicated, intentionally or otherwise, in a deformed way which may induce severe misconceptions, make the public vulnerable to scams and deceptions, or even pave the way to anti-scientific beliefs. In this paper we report on the two-year results of a summer school on quantum information science for secondary school students, held with the support of the Italian NQSTI - National Quantum Science and Technology Institute. We concentrate here only on results demonstrating the changes in students' attitudes toward pseudoscientific conceptions of quantum science and technology, as measured by a specially tailored questionnaire - the PSEUDO-QM scale. Our preliminary results show that meaningful conceptual instruction about quantum physics and quantum technology may not only be beneficial for the need for a future quantum workforce, but also significantly reduce the extent of pseudo-scientific conceptions about quantum theory.
Abstract Teaching and learning quantum mechanics is one of the most demanding educational and conceptual challenges, in particular in secondary schools where students do not possess an adequate mathematical background to effectively support the description of quantum behaviour. Educational research shows that traditional approaches, generally based on historical and narrative perspectives, are only partially effective. The reason is that they do not address in depth those basic quantum concepts that radically question the fundamentals of classical physics. A research-based educational program has been proposed to two final-year classes of an Italian scientific high school. In order to build the main concepts of quantum mechanics and their formal basic representation via real and simulated experiments, the program uses the light polarization as a context. A quantum game was then integrated in the educational program, to support students’ learning. Their conceptual paths, monitored by means of tutorials and questionnaires, show significant student learning especially on the concept of state and on appropriating the formalism meaning, whereas students more frequently referred to the geometrical vector representation instead of the algebraic-analytic formula. The quantum game has emerged to support intuition and operative experience in distinguishing the foundational concepts of superposition and entanglement.
Quantum mechanics (QM) has taken on a paradigmatic role in how physics describes and builds new knowledge about the world. It also has a growing role in our society thanks to recent and rapid developments in the field of new quantum technologies. These are becoming increasingly important in our society, in the world of work and which will also decisively influence future socio-economic choices. Also for this reason QM has an increasing role in the education of young people and has been introduced in many different ways also in secondary school in all continents. The change in the theoretical and cultural frame has profound implications that are often not intuitive, which involve the appropriation of a specific way of thinking. Neither macroscopic phenomenology, nor intuition help, because there is no simple evidence of how quantum objects must be thought to interpret that unobservable microscopic world and for which we must enter another interpretative paradigm even if we want to limit ourselves to describe it. PER has carried out several studies on the learning of key concepts, on the learning nodes, the ways of reasoning, the difficulties of the students, their spontaneous ideas, according to two main strands: above all at university level, conceptual difficulties and misunderstandings often linked to a formal approach, which, moreover, underpins the very nature of the entities involved; at secondary school level in relation to how students acquire a quantum view of phenomena on the basis of specific approaches adopted to address QM. In particular, a vast literature, which has increased considerably and especially in relatively recent times, has studied how university students deal with certain concepts such as that of state, superposition, measurement in quantum mechanics rather than how quantum quantities evolve over time. These studies are based on the use of questionnaires that allow to explore different levels: the verbal, formal and representative one, with different representations (eg. wave function, Dirac notation), rather than different representative modes (eg. Graphs of probability amplitudes, or probability distributions). At the secondary school level, the most important studies on student learning were instead conducted evaluating the educational impact and outlining the learning paths of students who had followed formative activities based on differentiated innovative research-based educational paths. In particular, the learning outcomes were compared to those activated by proposals based on the historical reconstruction approach of quantum physics. This approach is privileged in traditional curricula and school texts and consequently in the ways of teachers approaching the topic. It was developed in schools with a narrative or descriptive dimension of solutions based on old physics of quanta for the interpretation of phenomena not explained by classical physics. The innovative approaches instead make use of contexts whose formal treatment is simple (quantum properties described in a two-state space such as polarization or spin) with the aid of simulations that compensate for the problem of students” limited mathematical-formal skills, avoiding any historical reference. In particular, there is a significant difference between the survey tools and the survey contexts in the high school environment compared to surveys conducted with university students. This paper presents a review of the research literature, focusing in particular on the learning processes of secondary school students and outlining how research perspectives have evolved.
Teaching quantum mechanics at the secondary school level remains a major educational challenge. Traditional historical approaches often present the theory as a sequence of disconnected phenomena, requiring extensive prior knowledge of classical physics before students can appreciate the conceptual structure of quantum physics. In this work, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a curriculum based on the two state (qubit first) approach, in which the fundamental postulates of quantum mechanics are introduced through mathematically accessible two level systems and realized with light polarization. The curriculum integrates theoretical instruction, laboratory activities, a coherent progression grounded in the interactive simulations, and inquiry based learning into a coherent pathway that progresses from quantum states and superposition to entanglement and the experimental violation of Bell's inequalities. A distinctive feature of the project is the experimental realization of the violation of Bell's inequalities obtained in a newly established quantum optics laboratory in an Italian high school, where students performed, for the first time in Italy, an authentic Bell test using polarization-entangled photons. The same educational framework was adopted for in service teacher professional development courses. Learning outcomes were evaluated through mixed methods. Preliminary analysis indicates significant improvements in conceptual understanding, confidence in using mathematical formalism, and appreciation of the relationship between theory, experimentation, and the foundations of quantum mechanics. The proposed curriculum shows that two-state formalism and supported by real laboratory experiences enables secondary-school students to engage more meaningfully with both the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics and their experimental verification.
[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research.] Evidence from physics education research suggests that the introduction of a formalistic description of quantum phenomena can be beneficial to student learning, particularly in terms of helping students move away from naive realist views of quanta or space-time descriptions of quantum phenomena. However, the mathematical requirements for mastering quantum formalism are typically far beyond the scope of secondary school education. Therefore, in previous research, we have proposed a reduced Dirac notation tailored to the capabilities of secondary school students, which is included in a novel teaching-learning sequence. However, the cognitive processes of students when confronted with an introduction to quantum physics via a reduced Dirac notation have not been thoroughly investigated: In particular, it seems important to investigate whether this approach is actually beneficial to students’ learning and to explore the learning difficulties students are likely to encounter in such a setting. This paper contributes to this research gap by reporting the findings of an acceptance survey: N = 14 learners participated in one-on-one interviews following a protocol consisting of four cyclical phases (information phase, acceptance evaluation, paraphrasing phase, and application phase). The findings of our study indicate that the instructional elements within our new teaching-learning sequence were generally well accepted by students but also revealed learning difficulties that students may encounter. Thus, on the one hand, the findings of this study pave the way for future research on students’ learning of quantum physics using Dirac notation. On the other hand, the in-depth findings reported here may guide teachers in designing learning environments that introduce Dirac notation at the upper secondary school and introductory university levels. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Abstract Quantum entanglement is a challenging concept within the field of physics education, often eluding a full grasp by both educators and learners alike. In this paper, we report findings from a two-phase empirical study into the views of entanglement held by pre-service physics teachers and physics students from various universities. In the first phase, we utilized a questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions which was completed by 31 pre-service physics teachers. The study participants’ ideas were explored using qualitative content analysis which led to the creation of rating scale items used in study phase 2. These items were administered to a broader cohort including 73 physics university students in order to capture the learners’ agreement or disagreement with the questionnaire statements, and hence, helped to validate and substantiate the in-depth insights from study phase 1. Key findings revealed widespread accurate notions, like the need to consider the entire system when examining entangled states. However, less elaborated views were also identified, including ideas such as that measurements of entangled states always show perfect (anti-)correlation. Another striking observation was the confusion between quantum entanglement and superposition. In the case of quantum teleportation, many participants seemed to have a basic grasp of the concept, although a number of misconceptions were apparent, notably the idea that quantum entanglement enables faster-than-light communication. Practically, the findings can assist educators in anticipating and addressing widespread (mis-)conceptions, paving the way for more effective instruction in quantum mechanics and its real-world applications, such as quantum cryptography and computing.
Abstract The teaching of quantum technologies has now become a leading topic and is at the heart of numerous international programs (e.g., quantum flagship, National Quantum Initiative, UK national quantum technology program) with the aim of widening the workforce and preparing the next generations of experts. In the present contribution, we present an approach for teaching the Second Quantum Revolution to secondary school students that we developed in recent years. The approach aims to emphasize the ongoing revolution as first of all a cultural revolution and its intrinsic interdisciplinary character. As an emblematic case of some aspects of the approach, we present an activity on the classical and quantum random walk algorithms whose main aims are to recontextualize some basic quantum concepts (quantum state, state manipulation/evolution, measurement, and entanglement) in the case of the algorithm and to reflect on the main differences between the classical and quantum case in terms of logic behind its functioning as well as from an epistemological perspective.