Secondary school students’ misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling

by Dr Kim Krijtenburg-Lewerissa (University Utrecht)

Thursday 28 Sept 2023, 09:00 → 10:00 Europe/Zurich

From the big bang to black holes, from elementary particles and the fundamental interactions that govern our universe to the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, our knowledge of the world builds on modern physics. To make our current-best understanding available to all, we need to invest in educational research and bridge the gap between those who know science, those who teach science, and those who learn science. 

This month, we are going to discuss a paper by Kim Krijtenburg-Lewerissa on secondary school students’ misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling: In order to investigate students’ misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling, a conceptual knowledge test was administered to Dutch secondary school students after they were taught about quantum mechanics. A frequency analysis of responses to the multiple choice questions (n=98) and coding of the responses to the open-ended questions and explanations (n=13) shows that Dutch secondary school students experience difficulties similar to those reported for undergraduate students. The students’ underlying difficulties were analyzed using a typology of learning impediments. Results of this analysis show that students have difficulty connecting knowledge of potential wells and tunneling to their prior knowledge. Students mainly have creative and epistemological learning impediments, which cause eight incorrect synthetic models.

Paper:

Krijtenburg-Lewerissa, K., Pol, H. J., Brinkman, A., & van Joolingen, W. R. (2020). Secondary school students’ misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 16(1), 010132. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.010132 

GMT20230928-070224_Recording_3440x1440.mp4