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From our experience teaching the spins-first Paradigms quantum mechanics course, students run into difficulties transitioning from discrete to continuous quantum systems. In computation, continuous structures like wavefunctions are necessarily discretized in order to be used in operations like numerical integration. Because of this feature, we believe that computation may naturally support the transition. Junior-level students at Oregon State University take a computational lab course where they numerically solve quantum mechanics problems by pair-programming in Python. This computational lab course is coordinated with the spins-first Paradigms course. We remotely interviewed six participants at the end of the courses. Participants completed a card-sorting task where they organized twenty cards with a variety of quantum mechanics content and representations. In this talk, we will discuss the ways participants organized this information, the overarching patterns, and the ways that students understand and coordinate discrete and continuous quantum systems.


AAPT SM 21

Computation to Support Understanding of Discrete and Continuous Quantum Systems

quantum mechanics

qualitative

computation

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technical paper

Physics mentors play an important role in supporting students in postsecondary education and in their transition to graduate school and careers. The knowledge and beliefs physics mentors have about disability can affect how they mentor students with disabilities. We administered the Disability and Physics Careers Survey (DPCS) to 237 practicing physicists recruited through physics-specific listservs to measure their knowledge about disability and beliefs about the viability of physics careers for people with different disability diagnoses. This study compares practicing physicists’ varied knowledge about different categories of impairments and diagnoses, and their beliefs about the viability of future careers for students with specific impairments. We present our findings examining the knowledge of practicing physicists about disability, their beliefs about the viability of certain physics careers for people with disabilities, and how those beliefs may vary depending on their personal disability experience.

Examining Physicists’ Perspectives of Career Viability and Knowledge of Impairment

In interviews about land acknowledgements, high school physics teachers expressed a number of different ways they engaged with Indigenous history after learning about and practicing land acknowledgements in a year-long professional learning community (PLC). These different ways include; learning about Indigenous displacement, connecting physics to historic and current exploitation of Indigenous lands and people, and identifying ways they can incorporate Indigenous history into their physics education curriculum. Throughout the interviews, teachers expressed how they had always viewed Indigenous history and physics as two separate schools of thoughts. This highlights the importance and need for physics education research (PER) to be more inclusive of Indigenous voices and bring to the forefront Indigenous histories, people, and perspectives. This will help start bridging the gap that continues to exclude Indigenous peoples and communities from the field of physics.

From Land Acknowledgments to Action: Engaging with Indigenous History

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a move to remote/online instruction beginning in the middle of the Spring 2020 semester. As a result, the Fall 2020 cohort of first-year physics PhD students, who would also be graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) for the first time, had to both attend their graduate coursework and teach their assigned labs and recitations remotely. Our Physics GTA Preparation course, a robust and comprehensive program that has been running since 2013 and integrates pedagogy, physics, and professional development strategies, had to be modified in terms of content and delivery to adjust to the present situation. In this talk, I will briefly describe our regular GTA preparation course, the changes made for online instruction, and the things that worked or didn't work in the modified curriculum.

Remote GTA Preparation: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

High-school teaching in Japan is traditionally known as teacher-driven. To improve the situation, the new Course of Study for high schools, which will be fully implemented in 2022, emphasizes the importance of active learning and inquiry. This study examines the effectiveness of the use of action research and RTOP (Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol) for improving high-school physics lessons in Japan. Three action research sessions were conducted for a particular Basic Physics class in two months. The results indicate that the RTOP scores improved dramatically as action research progressed, especially in the areas of teacher’s procedural knowledge and student-student interactions. The teacher’s attitudes towards active learning and collaboration also showed an improvement. Discussions on the difficulties of helping teachers have student-centered views in physics teaching will be included in the presentation.

Effectiveness of Action Research and RTOP for Improving Physics Lessons

Computational modeling is increasingly becoming a critical and necessary component of a physics education. Integrating Computation in Science Across Michigan (ICSAM), an NSF-funded program at Michigan State University, aims to help high school teachers bring computational modeling to their physics classrooms. In this presentation, we illustrate the kinds of resources that participating teachers used to integrate computation in their physics teaching through a case-study analysis of a particularly active teacher participant. Through the past two years, we observed and recorded participating teachers’ journeys in classroom videos, interviews, and other data. We examined the data using emergent coding to characterize the resources that these teachers have used while integrating computation into their classrooms and how these resources have changed over time. Through this work, we aim to share implications for professional development providers, curriculum developers, and practicing teachers. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1741575).

Teacher use of resources while integrating computational modeling into classrooms

Learning Assistants (LA) are pivotal to non-traditional physics instruction in large classrooms. In this study, we used the framework of Pedagogical Content Knowledge for questioning (PCK-Q) to measure LAs’ questioning skills. We designed a written instrument describing various situations that LAs would encounter while interacting with students. LAs needed to articulate how they would support student learning considering their difficulties. We also developed a coding scheme to analyze how LAs’ questions leveraged students’ conceptual understanding. We administered this written instrument with LAs who had various years of experience in inquiry-based physics courses and analyzed their videos of interacting with students in online settings during the COVID pandemic. We validated the written instrument with class videos, delineated the LAs’ PCK-Q, and suggested how the LAs’ questions contributed to students’ conceptual learning about classical mechanics.

Measure student assistants’ PCK-Q in online settings during COVID pandemic

Learning Assistants (LAs) are increasingly used in classrooms all over the globe, where LAs help teach in a variety of student-centered, active-learning environments. The LA Model consists of three core components: the LA pedagogy course, weekly preparatory meetings with the instructional team, and the actual LA teaching
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Analysis of LA- and TA-facilitated group work in studio classrooms

Abstract: For decades, undergraduate physics programs have struggled with the underrepresentation of women. The STEP UP project (STEPUPphysics.org) was designed to reduce barriers for women in physics and encourage high school women to pursue an undergraduate physics degree. STEP UP focuses on implementing high school interventions by working with cohorts of high school physics teachers, called Ambassadors, who are trained to teach and propagate STEP UP’s research-driven materials throughout their networks. To understand the effects of training, surveys were administered to Ambassadors throughout the school year. Taking a “tempered radicals” framing, this talk will present an analysis of survey responses including how they changed after completing their Ambassadorship and how this information can be used to identify teachers who are willing to disrupt the status quo. Results should help other programs seeking to develop “tempered radicals” in their communities.

Identifying Shifts in Agency In the STEP UP Ambassador Program

We surveyed a national sample of United States physics faculty about
the COVID-19 transition to online learning. The majority of faculty
had 1-2 weeks to prepare and no prior experience with teaching online.
They relied on department peers to discuss approaches and used lecture
adaptations such as videoconferencing rather than new curricular
elements. Their responses were empathetic to the students' situation,
and 90% said they were average or above at implementing online
instruction. Faculty's preference for local resources and existing
methods suggests that in a crisis, strong network ties will dominate
as information sources, with consequences for professional development
and instructional change.

Transitions to online physics teaching: Empathy and above average quality

As part of an effort to examine student understanding of mathematical representations in quantum mechanics, online survey tasks were designed and administered to students at the end of their upper-division QM courses at several institutions. Virtual task-based clinical interviews were also conducted in the following semester with students at the University of Maine. Tasks were designed to find expressions and concepts that were related or viewed as similar in students’ minds, and to determine what concepts were ascribed to various expressions. Geometric concepts, including vectors and dot products, were used to describe various expressions, as were physical concepts such as quantum states and probabilities of physical measurements. Multiple physical and mathematical concepts were often invoked for a single expression, and vice versa. Sherin’s symbolic forms framework was used to guide analysis, and potential symbolic forms used by students for expressions in both Dirac notation and wave function notation were identified.

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Computation to Support Understanding of Discrete and Continuous Quantum Systems

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