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Avoiding the ‘fish bowl’ effect
One of the problems our drama student teachers had was expecting drama activities to have power to stand alone as learning experiences (they did this much more than the science specialist students) – they often chose to stand back and did not often help pupils connect actions with concepts. It was as if they had implicit faith in performance as learning. But drama for theatre is not the same as drama to learn science. Pupils should not have to act as if being observed by others from outside a “fish bowl”. Drama for science is not like acting a play for an audience – it is an example of ‘rough’ or ‘good enough’ drama (see Braund, 2015 for an explanation of this) where the experience must produce sufficient connections to help make content meaningful.
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Dawson, E., Hill, A., Barlow, J., & Weitkamp, E. (2009) Genetic testing in a drama and discussion workshop: exploring knowledge construction. Research in Drama Education, 14(3), 361-390.
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McSharry, G., & Jones, S. (2000). Role-play in science teaching and learning. School Science Review, 82(298), 73–82.
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Routledge.
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Berit Bungumand Ellen Karoline Henriksen: Light talking: Students’ reflections on the wave-particle duality for light in small-group discussions
Light talking: Students’ reflections on the wave-particle duality for light in small-group discussions
Berit Bungum*a, Ellen Karoline Henriksenb
aDepartment of Physics, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7414 Trondheim, Norway
bDepartment of Physics, University of Oslo,0316 Oslo, Norway
* Corresponding author e-mail address: berit.bungum@ntnu.no
Abstract
Quantum physics breaks fundamentally with our experiences and view of the world. This paper investigates how upper secondary school students conceptualise the wave-particle duality in small-group discussions, during a teaching sequence with use of digital learning resources developed in the ReleQuant project. The resources are developed with Design-based research as a methodological frame. Earlier results indicate that students may hold an uncritical conception of the duality for light.
Therefore, the resources were modified to include a discussion task that encourages students to reflect on the dilemma of having two models for light that are contradictory in a classical sense. 55 small-group discussions on this task were recorded and analysed qualitatively. Results show that students were able to reflect thoughtfully on the two contradicting models for light and on what the duality entails. However, students encountered challenges concerning how the duality should be interpreted.
It is concluded that upper secondary physics should let students go deeper into conceptual and ontological aspects of quantum physics, and this way contribute to students’ understanding of philosophical aspects of modern physics and the nature of scientific knowledge.
Keywords: Light; small-group discussions; upper secondary school; quantum physics.
INTRODUCTION
Quantum physics breaks fundamentally with our classical view of the world and everyday experiences. Research has shown that even if university physics students may master the mathematical technicalities of quantum mechanics, their conceptual understanding is often fragmented (e.g. Hadzidaki, 2008), and students often interpret quantum phenomena in classical terms (see e.g. Kalkanis, Hadzidaki, & Stavrou, 2003). A recent review undertaken by Krijtenburg-Lewerissa, Pol, Brinkman, and van Joolingen (2017) shows that there is a lack of empirical evidence of which teaching strategies promote understanding in quantum
physics.
The present paper contributes to the field by investigating how philosophical aspects of quantum physics can form part of pre-university physics teaching. The results stem from the project ReleQuant (see Bungum, Henriksen, Angell, Tellefsen, & Bøe, 2015), where Design-Based Research (DBR, also referred to as Educational Design Research) is used as a
methodological frame for combining research and development in several cycles (see e.g.
Anderson & Shattuck, 2012). The developed resources in ReleQuant are digital modules for the teacher to use with students during physics lessons in upper secondary schools. With a sociocultural view of learning, the resources emphasize students’ use of language and reflections on philosophical aspects of modern physics. The resources are adapted to the Norwegian curriculum for Physics in the curriculum for upper secondary school, where it is stated that students are required to gain insights into how the wave nature of particles
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represents a break with classical physics and reflect on philosophical consequences of modern physics. These issues are quite unusual in a curriculum for pre-university physics (see
Bungum et al., 2015; Krijtenburg-Lewerissa et al., 2017), and gives an opportunity to explore new approaches to the teaching of modern physics for young students and to research students learning challenges.
Quantum physics and interpretations
In the early twentieth century, quantum mechanics was developed and was soon successful in describing and predicting experimental results for quantum-scale phenomena by means of mathematics. Today, it forms part of the theoretical foundation for development of new technologies such as quantum computers. This theoretical foundation includes a description of light as having both particle properties and wave properties, referred to as the wave-particle duality. However, there is no consensus about how to interpret quantum physics, including the contemporary scientific description of light, on an ontological level (Bunge, 2003). Physics students are presented with the wave-particle duality for light, but discussions on what it means on an ontological level rarely form part of physics teaching . The mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics constitutes a body of knowledge that most physicists agree on, but the link between this formalism and a physical reality remains far from consensual (Cheong & Song, 2014).
One philosophical position is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, stating that a quantum physical system does not have a definite physical state prior to being measured and that quantum mechanics can only predict the probabilities that measurements will produce certain results. A different philosophical stance is realism, where it is assumed that the
universe exists independently of the knowing subject or observer (Bunge, 2012) and that “the objects of science (…) reflect objective structural aspects of the physical world” (Karakostas
& Hadzidaki, 2005p. 607). Many physicists do, however, not consider the discussion about different interpretations, but rather take an instrumental approach where one is satisfied when the calculational rules give results that are successful in predicting a physical reality. This stance will inevitably also influence how one approaches the teaching of quantum mechanics to students. Greca and Freire (2014) have argued that this may be because the very existence of several interpretations of quantum theory seems to be an inconvenient truth for the teaching of physics.
The ReleQuant project and prior results
The ReleQuant project meets the challenges described above by developing learning
resources with the aim of engaging pre-university students in discussions about interpretations of quantum physics. The resources are developed in cycles based on analysis of data from classroom trials of the resources. The final version of the resources are available in English from www.viten.no/eng/. The wave-particle duality for light is presented in the introductory part of the resources, with title “Need for a new physics” and includes descriptions of the history of quantum physics.
Earlier results from the project have shown that many students express an ‘uncritical duality’
(see Henriksen, Angell, Vistnes, & Bungum, 2018), which means that they describe light as having properties of both waves and particles, without reflecting on the fact that these models
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are contradictory in a classical sense. A typical student response of this kind is “Light is particles where the wavelength determines the colour of the light”.
The resources were therefore adjusted to include a discussion task where students are
challenged to reflect on whether it is possible to imagine that light is both waves and particles in a classical sense. The task is shown i Figure 1. Before the discussion task, the students watched short videos describing the history of quantum physics and two physicists expressing different views on the nature of light.