Conceptual approaches to contemporary physics topics pose many learning challenges. One factor influencing knowledge integration is a student's epistemological framing. Epistemic frames provide a context within which a particular situation is perceived, interpreted, and judged. The utility of an epistemic frame is context dependent, and the…

The ability to relate physical concepts and phenomena to multiple mathematical representations--and to move fluidly between these representations--is a critical outcome expected of physics instruction. In upper-division quantum mechanics, students must work with multiple symbolic notations, including some that they have not previously encountered.…

Students' motivational beliefs about physics can influence their engagement and performance in physics as well as retention in their majors and careers. Students from underrepresented groups in physics such as women may not have enough encouragement and role models to help them develop strong motivational beliefs in physics. The societal…

This dissertation presents results from research and curriculum development related to student understanding of the principle of superposition in introductory optics and upper-division quantum mechanics courses. The focus is on the extent to which students are able to relate the mathematical formalism used in physics to real-world phenomena. In…

Classical mechanics challenges students to use their intuitions and experiences as a basis for understanding, in effect to approach learning as "a refinement of everyday thinking'' (Einstein, 1936). Moving on to quantum mechanics (QM), students, like physicists, need to adjust this approach, in particular with respect to the roles that…

Social, financial, and academic stress often generate difficulties and may be associated with students' self-efficacy and enrollment status. A large percentage of students who initially enroll in college often do not make it to graduation. There are several reasons why college students drop out or stop out and there is a crying need for a solution…

The purpose of this quantitative comparative study was to determine if, and to what extent, there were differences to the propensity to trust in information technology individual team members based on their work setting when covarying for years of experience. The theoretical foundations comprised the social presence theory and the quantum of trust…

Quantum error-correcting codes have been the cornerstone of research in quantum information science (QIS) for more than a decade. Without their conception, quantum computers would be a footnote in the history of science. When researchers embraced the idea that we live in a world where the effects of a noisy environment cannot completely be…

In the spring of 2022, Learning Forward released an updated version of their professional learning standards. The concepts and research highlighted in the 2022 version of the standards are not necessarily new to the field of education. However, orchestrating the standards to create conditions for success and enact transformational processes for…

A state selected at random from the Hilbert space of a many-body system is overwhelmingly likely to exhibit highly non-classical correlations. For these typical states, half of the environment must be measured by an observer to determine the state of a given subsystem. The objectivity of classical reality--the fact that multiple observers can each…

Two people in the same situation may ascribe very different meanings to their experiences. They will form different awareness, reacting differently to shared information. Various factors can give rise to this behavior. These factors include, but are not limited to, prior knowledge, training, biases, cultural factors, social factors, team vs.…

Research has shown student inattention, off-task behaviors, and lack of listening skills in the classroom can impact progress in reading, math, and language development. Lack of verbal interaction in home environments, variations in learning and teaching modalities, and larger class sizes contribute to the difficulties students have in developing…

We introduce a "W*"-metric space, which is a particular approach to non-commutative metric spaces where a "quantum metric" is defined on a von Neumann algebra. We generalize the notion of a quantum code and quantum error correction to the setting of finite dimensional "W*"-metric spaces, which includes codes and error correction for classical…

This dissertation aims to explore how students think about atomic absorption and emission of light in the area of introductory quantum chemistry. In particular, the impact of classical ideas of electron position and energy on student understanding of spectra is studied. The analysis was undertaken to discover how student learning can be…

A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this notoriously difficult task may be frustrated by the intuitively "realist" perspectives of introductory…