Understanding Coordinated Sets of Resources: An Example from Quantum Tunnelling

Publishing data
Michael C. Wittmann
2003
Resource type: 
conference paper
Publication details: 
Fermi School in Physics Education Research, Varenna, Italy

In studying student reasoning about quantum physics in the context of tunneling through a barrier, we observe that students commonly use several reasoning resources in conjunction with one another. Our data is gathered in individual student interviews, ungraded quizzes, diagnostic surveys, and examination questions. We believe that solely a microscopic perspective on the individually used reasoning resources is too narrow to help us understand student reasoning. We also believe that students do not have a coherent, robust (macroscopic) concept of tunneling that can be described as a coordination class. To account for our data, we introduce a mesoscopic description of a coordinated set of resources. We describe a possible coordinated set in quantum tunneling, complete with a readout strategy and net of associated resources and mathematical forms, that a student uses in favor of another possible coordinated set, the resources and forms of which he has available but which he seems not to read out of the given situation.

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