Investigating the use of Kelly s Cycle of Experience to understand the concept of electron diffraction

Abstract

The objective of this work is to investigate changes that occur on Physics licentiate students´ conceptions about electron diffraction, when engaged in a Kelly s Cycle of Experience. The five steps of this Cycle (anticipation, investment, encounter, confirmation or disconfirmation and constructive revision) were distributed during ten meetings, with an average duration of two hours each. During these meetings students conceptions were identified, initially through a pre-test and finally through a post-test and an interview. Fifteen students, following Modern Physics and Quantum Mechanic courses at Universidade Estadual da Paraíba, were investigated at the beginning of the research. Their conceptions about electron diffraction were similar to those described in previous researches. The following steps of Kelly’s Cycle of Experience were applied only to seven students of Quantum Mechanics whose conceptions changed towards a better articulation between corpuscular and wave nature of matter. As a result, a deeper and less fragmented understanding of this subject was possible.