Sergej Faletič

University of Ljubljana · Faculty of Mathematics and Physics

The teaching and learning of quantum physics has recently become a topic of increasing interest in physics education research. In particular, the study of two-state systems is gaining importance as a means of teaching quantum physics at various educational levels. Meanwhile, a number of approaches have been developed that are also suitable for high...

Quantum physics (QP) education at the secondary school level is still in its infancy. Not only is there ongoing discussion about how to teach this subject, but there is also a lack of coherence in the selection of concepts to be taught, both across countries and over time. To contribute to this discussion, we investigated the perspectives of N = 39...

The advancement of quantum technology is putting in the spotlight the question of quantum awareness or quantum literacy among the general population. Therefore, initiatives have been put forward to bring quantum mechanics to pre-university level. Some countries entered quantum mechanics in their regular high school curriculum, and some did not. Var...

Quantum physics as a consolidated theory and with increasing applications and visions from quantum technologies is gaining importance also as a subject in schools. Efforts are increasing to introduce quantum physics in high school throughout Europe. These efforts must be underpinned by stringent teacher education, as well as by general education an...

The International Handbook of Physics Education Research: Learning Physics covers the subject matter and cognitive aspects of physics learning. As the field of physics education research grows, it is increasingly difficult for newcomers to gain an appreciation of the major findings across all sub-domains, discern global themes, and recognize gaps i...

The GIREP community on teaching and learning quantum physics and the Education section of the Quantum flagship project of the European Union (QTEdu) have brought together different stakeholders in the field of teaching quantum physics on all levels, including outreach. The goal of QTEdu is to pave the way for the training of the future quantum work...

The Young Physicists' Tournament (YPT) inspires high-school students to immerse themselves into an inquiry process closely resembling the real physics research. Using questionnaires' replies from the students and their teachers engaged in YPT, we investigated how the preparation for YPT contributes to the development of hard - scientific - skills o...

A simple and economic scintillator kit in combination with a computer based oscilloscope was used to develop a learning experience, comprised of a set of activities to introduce students in an interactive way to the physics of gamma ray detection. The proposal for secondary school and university students is built by means of frequent on-the-fly for...

We investigated how students perceive the role of IYPT (www.iypt.org) participation in their development of soft skills. We also investigated how students teachers assess the contribution of YPT participation to students soft skills development. Third, we link self-reported soft-skill development to performance in research tasks, as assessed by int...

In this article the discussion of Working Group 3 during the GIREP online seminar 2020 on teaching and learning quantum physics in teacher education is summarized. Conclusions are drawn and research desiderata formulated.

Introductory physics course design is a challenge requiring innovation across many dimensions and responsibilities, all with the goal of improving student competencies. Discipline-based education research contributes to reaching that goal through developing and validating ways to improve active learning. For physics competencies, the main aspects t...

Over the last several years, active learning methods and strategies have received considerable attention from the educational community and are commonly presented in the related literature as a credible solution to the reported lack of efficacy of more “traditional” educative approaches. Research has shown that a possible factor is the strongly con...

In our teaching approach to quantum mechanics for high schools, we combined a two-state system approach with a matter-wave approach. We developed a simulation of a double well, which has been gradually improved with experience to include all the functionality needed to address the most important concepts of quantum physics. A complementary simulati...

A simple scintillator kit developed by Ian Bearden [1] was used to prepare a learning experience on gamma ray detection for secondary students. The goal is to offer an opportunity to collect gamma spectra, analyse data and understand how coincidence measurements are useful in space physics and in many other applications.

To create an opportunity for students to re-elaborate their knowledge and offering them a working experience, 145 16-17 years old students from 6 classes from a Scientific Lyceum were involved in a research activity with responsibility in specific tasks involving conceptual learning of pulses and mechanical waves. Experiments by means of classical...

The present paper summarizes the building of the GIREP community on teaching and learning quantum physics in secondary school and the results of the community’s first discussion workshop. The questions for the workshop were prepared using feedback from the community members. The participants to the Working Discussion in Budapest Conference were div...

Scientific abilities rubrics developed at Rutgers University are an assessment and self-assessment tool. They consist of tables, each representing a broad scientific ability (for example, “to collect and analyze data”), the listing of subabilities (for example, “independent and dependent variables are identified”) and the criteria to assess to whic...

I report on my observations during an active-learning activity on the topic of phase and group velocities with in-service physics teachers and a small group of high school students. The activity was designed to be as active as possible, and to guide the participants to the discovery (or reminder) that phase velocity is not the only velocity relevan...

During propagation in an anisotropic medium, linearly polarised light in general becomes elliptically polarised. One can detect the polarisation state of the transmitted light, but not the evolution of the polarisation state during the propagation inside the material. We present a mechanical model where this evolution can be observed. The anisotrop...

Interviews with students suggest that even though they understand the formalism and the formal nature of quantum theory, they still often desire a mental picture of what the equations describe and some tangible experience with the wavefunctions. Here we discuss a mechanical wave system capable of reproducing correctly a mechanical equivalent of a q...

In the following article we show that mechanical waves on a braced string can have the same shapes as important wave functions in introductory quantum mechanics. A braced string is a string with additional transversal springs that serve as external "potential". The aim is not to suggest teaching quantum mechanics with these analogies. Instead, the...

Nowadays, internet and multimedia are important sources of information. Teaching processes have to adapt to these, but information-communication technology (ICT) also offers the chance to develop new teaching methods that are specifically designed to exploit the advantages of ICT over traditional methods, rather than trying to convert traditional m...