Investigating the drivers and mental representations of the private interpretations of students of quantum mechanics

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the mental images and the drivers of physics graduates, both the acquired and the modified after the use of hypercultural and social mediations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the interpretive frameworks and the modeling present in the process of understanding fundamental concepts of Quantum Mechanics. Therefore, we adopted the harmonization of two theoretical referentials, the Cognitive Networks Mediation Theory (CNMT), because of its treatment of the hypercultural mediation, and Mario Bunge’s Scientific Modeling Theory, due to his perception of the construction of knowledge in a rational way through the interpretation of reality. The results were obtained after analyzing the pre-tests, post-tests and the depictive gestures obtained from the video images recorded during the post-test interviews. Our results indicate the predominance of a ‘classical realistic’ interpretation in the interpretation of the students, and we also observed divergences in the propositional and analogical representations expressed during the student’s explanation of the wave-particle duality as it happened in the virtual experiments.