Making sense of quantum teleportation: An intervention study on students' conceptions using a diagrammatic approach

TL;DR

This study explores how upper-secondary students and teachers understand quantum teleportation using a diagrammatic approach, revealing that while it aids accessibility, it still presents significant conceptual challenges requiring careful instructional design.

Contribution

It introduces a diagrammatic formalism based on ZX-calculus for teaching quantum teleportation and analyzes its impact on students' conceptual understanding at the upper-secondary level.

Findings

Diagrammatic formalism offers accessible entry point for teaching quantum physics.

Understanding of quantum teleportation depends on grasping temporality, entanglement, and measurement.

Conceptual challenges remain despite simplified representations.

Abstract

Quantum physics education at the upper-secondary level traditionally follows a historical approach, rarely extending beyond early 20th-century ideas, leaving students unprepared for comprehending modern quantum technologies central to everyday life and many facets of modern industry. To address this gap, we investigated how upper-secondary students and pre-service teachers understand quantum teleportation when taught with a simplified diagrammatic formalism based on the ZX-calculus, which represents quantum processes as diagrams of wires and boxes. Through phenomenographic analysis of video-recorded group work sessions, written responses to exercises, and a group interview, with a total of n=21 participants, we identified an outcome space consisting of four qualitatively different, hierarchically ordered categories of description encapsulating the different ways of experiencing quantum teleportation. The categories revealed that a conceptual progression depends on how one understands the temporality in quantum processes, the role of entanglement in quantum teleportation, the active nature of quantum measurements, and interpretations of mathematical operations in the diagrams. Our findings demonstrate that while a simplified diagrammatic formalism for teaching quantum physics provides an accessible entry point at the upper-secondary level, it does not automatically resolve fundamental conceptual challenges, and requires careful consideration in terms of developing teaching and learning sequences. Finally, these results provide educators with a deeper understanding of conceptual affordances and challenges for designing and improving instruction, whilst also highlighting the need for further exploring how students and teachers alike understand quantum phenomena.