In his 4/2/01 AERA-J post "AP Students" Richard Iuli wrote:
"Each year there is a core group of about 100 students
(overwhelmingly they are those who scored a 4 or 5 on the AP biology
exam) in the intro genetics course who struggle. We hypothesize that
the reason for their difficulties is that their AP courses did not
help them to build solid conceptual frameworks upon which to build
subsequent knowledge."
My 25-years experience with AP students coming into pre-med
introductory physics classes at Indiana University indicated that
they had little, if any, conceptual understanding of Newtonian
mechanics, as measured, for example, by the "Force Concept Inventory"
(1,2) pretest.
I think that the development of an "AP-A" course that places CID
(Conceptual, Inquiry, Discovery) ahead of QPS (Qualitative Problem
Solving) as suggested by Bruce Oldaker(3) would be very worthwhile. I
am personally disenchanted with AP physics because, from what little
I know, it seems to be totally devoted to QPS, simply taking nearly
totally ineffective university introductory courses(4-6) down into
the high schools.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
REFERENCES
1. D. Hestenes, M. Wells, and G. Swackhamer. "Force Concept
Inventory," Phys. Teach. 30, 141-158 (1992). I. Halloun, R.R. Hake,
E.P. Mosca, and D. Hestenes. 1995. Force Concept Inventory (Revised,
1995); password protected at
<http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html>.
2. R.R. Hake, "Is it Finally Time to Implement Curriculum S?" AAPT
Announcer 30(4), 103 (2000). [CurriculumS.pdf., 3/15/01, 1200K] (400
references & footnotes, 390 hot-linked URL's); on the web as ref. 13
at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>.
3. Bruce Oldaker, private communication "Comments and Thoughts" of 3/22/01.
4. R.R. Hake, "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A
six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory
physics courses," Am. J. Phys. 66, 64-74 (1998); on the Web at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>.
5. R.R. Hake, "Interactive-engagement methods in introductory
mechanics courses," on the Web at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/> and submitted on 6/19/98 to
the "Physics Education Research Supplement to AJP"(PERS).
6. R.R. Hake, "Lessons from the Physics Education Reform Effort,"
submitted on 3/28/01 to "Conservation Ecology"
<http://www.consecol.org/Journal/>, a "peer-reviewed journal of
integrative science and fundamental policy research." On the web as
ref. 10 at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
[ConEc-Hake-O32601a.pdf, 3/26/01, 172K) (179 references, 98
hot-linked URL's). 164K).