An interdisciplinary approach to classical and quantum random walk: an activity with secondary school students

The thesis is a follow up of the “I SEE project” (Inclusive STEM Education to Enhance the capacity to aspire and imagine future careers), a triennial ERASMUS+ project, started in 2016 and ended in September 2019, coordinated by the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Bologna (https://iseeproject.eu/). The main aim of the project is to design of teaching modules on advanced interdisciplinary STEM topics, such as climate change, quantum computers or artificial intelligence, for secondary school students. The approach developed toward these STEM topics reflects the need of updating Science Education and preparing students to address the socio-scientific challenges that the world compels us to face. The work of this thesis concerns the design and the development of an activity on classical and quantum random walk that aims to: i. carry out the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of the topic, ii. highlight the differences between the logic at the basis of the classical and quantum computers. It is designed in the light of a follow-up of the I SEE project, the IDENTITIES project (https://identitiesproject.eu/). IDENTITIES (Integrate Disciplines to Elaborate Novel Teaching approaches to InTerdisciplinarity and Innovate pre-service teacher Education for STEM challenges) is an ERASMUS+ project, started in September 2019 and coordinated by the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Bologna. This project, more focused on interdisciplinary themes, provides a lens to explore the random walk as a context in which we can investigate, on one hand, the peculiarities of the disciplines involved and, on the other, their intertwining. A future-oriented part, my main contribution to the activity, is carried out in order to foster students to explore the wide range of application and implication that random walk hides and to show them the variety of STEM carriers that can be involved.