Re: Physics First

[jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu (James Mclean)]

Lowell Herr says:
> Ken,  We maintain a second, less integrated program, for such students.  
> Even so, there are problems keeping a good integrated program going as 
> teachers need to be able to teach more than one science.  We blend or 
> cross biology and chemistry or chemistry and physics but have never had 
> to ask a teacher to teach both biology and physics concepts.
>
> Lowell

This might be a totally unworkable idea, but...
would it be possible to rotate through each subject, spending a third af a
year on each?  Does that get around the need to have teachers qualified in
more than one area?  You'd still want some cross over, of course, but maybe
that would minimize it?

In another direction, I learned highschool freshmen physical science from a
book called something like "Physics with Biophysics Applications".  (It was
in a [physical science-biology-chemistry-advanced course] sequence that I
felt served me pretty well.)  Have you found similar "integrated" books to
be helpful in your integrated curiculum?

-- 
--James McLean
jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu
post doc
UCSD