Implementation of a didactic proposal on fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics with students of a professional master's degree in physics teaching

This paper presents the findings of a research on the acquisition of the concepts of physical system, dynamical variables, state of a physical system, and time evolution in Quantum Mechanics, based on the learning theories of David Ausubel and Gerard Vergnaud. This investigation involved six students in a Professional Master's Degree in Physics Teaching, and it consisted of the implementation of a didactic proposal that comprised a 12-hour-long expository-dialogued presential course, which also included extra-classroom tasks and interviews. Evidences of the occurrence of meaningful learning of the course contents were obtained, both at the operative and at predicative forms of knowledge, with some limitations in the assimilation of some of these concepts. We noticed a few difficulties in the assimilation of the concepts of physical system, dynamical variables, and higher degree of difficulty in the assimilation of the concept state of a physical system. We attained a relevant point, which was the modification of the concept time evolution that had been already present in the students' cognitive structure, though in a nonspecific way before instruction.