Abstract

HILGER, Thaís Rafaela  and  MOREIRA, Marco Antonio. A study of social representations of quantum physics held by high school students through numerical and written word association tests. Rev. electrón. investig. educ. cienc. [online]. 2013, vol.8, n.1, pp.52-61. ISSN 1850-6666.

This paper presents findings of a preliminary research on possible social representations of quantum theory that might being shared by high school students. Its purpose was to identify and to characterize these social representations through numerical and written word association tests (NWAT and WWAT) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques of analysis. The understanding of such representations might provide hints of the influence of the media on the students' ideas regarding scientific concepts. In school learning, these ideas are part of the students' prior knowledge, which, when these ideas act as subsumers, can play a key role, not necessarily in the sense of helping, in the occurrence of meaningful learning of quantum mechanics.

Keywords : Quantum physics; Social representations; Meaningful learning.

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