Amplifying Physics Students' Voices: How Learners Approach Wonky and Unknowable Quantum Mechanics

Scholarship on Quantum Mechanics (QM) in physics education research (PER) tends to persist in examining learners' reasoning from a deficit perspective by emphasizing learners' incorrect approaches. Although there is a common understanding that QM is challenging, with students describing it as "wonky," "bizarre," or "weird," much of the deficit literature examines learners' difficulties by documenting incorrect strategies students take. Alternatively, some research literature and instruction seek to elevate students' approaches to QM. Drawing on resource theory and epistemological approaches, the current study aims to amplify students' voices, not through judgment or a deficit lens, but rather by foregrounding how they articulate QM and what strategies they find meaningful. Data comes from ethnographic-style solo or pair open-ended interviews with undergraduate quantum physics learners. Coding their verbal responses identified three approaches students take to navigating QM's wonky nature: reasoning across scale boundaries, relying on mathematics, and drawing on classical knowledge. Although prior deficit literature has identified two of the three approaches as barriers to quantum learning, we document cases where students view these approaches as their learning strategies. Furthermore, in the relevant literature, reasoning across scale boundaries has been overlooked as an approach to QM, thereby highlighting a new quantum learning opportunity. The results described throughout are situated in a broader literature emphasizing students' voices in PER, offering instructional implications, and prioritizing students' perspectives over researcher-imposed judgments.