Learning and Understanding Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Content Panel Report: Chemistry
Content Panel Report: Chemistry
Pages 339-396
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339 Content Panel Report: .~
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, the International Baccalaureate (IB) , and alternative programs for advanced study in chemistry with respect to their pedagogy, content, assessments, and outcomes (the charge to the panel is presented in Appendix A)
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Chapter 3 focuses on the students who enroll in the AP chemistry course and the IB program, what is taught and how well it is being taught, the grade levels at which these advanced courses are offered, and the background and prerequisites needed to take and succeed in the courses. Chapter 4 addresses those who teach AP and IB chemistry courses, including their academic preparation, credentials, and appropriateness for the task.
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chemistry courses, the College Board characterizes the AP chemistry course as follows: The AP chemistry course is designed to be the equivalent of the general chemistry course usually taken during the first college year. For some students, this course enables them to undertake, as freshmen, second-year work in the chemistry sequence at their institution or to register in courses in other fields where general chemistry is a prerequisite.
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It is in the first course that the requisite concepts are learned and the laboratory skills developed that are needed to legitimize advanced study in the second high school chemistry course.4 An appropriate background in mathematics is needed to succeed in AP chemistry, and the College Board addresses this matter as well: "In addition, the recommended mathematics prerequisite for an AP chemistry class is the 2The College Board (2001b) reports that in 2001 of the 55,000 students taking AP Chemistry, 3,000 were in the ninth or tenth grades, and 28,000 were in the eleventh grade.
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21. Because of the structure of the AP program, the AP chemistry course can be a stand-alone course offered by a high school in the absence of any other AP course offerings at that high school or other high schools in the district.
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The other courses taken are SL. Thus, a chemistry student can take either the HL or SL version of the IB chemistry course and related examination.
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component of the course. A common core curriculum applies to both HL and SL chemistry courses.
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Final IB scores for each student are a combination of the results of the IA and the external scoring of the examination papers but are reported to the school as a single total. QUALIliICATIONS FOR CACHING ADVANCED HIGH SCHOOL COURSES IN CHEMISTRY To provide a chemistry course consistent with the criteria noted above for an advanced study course in chemistry at the high school level, those 13The Group 4 project is an interdisciplinary activity that involves all of the IB science students at the school in identifying and investigating an issue, usually of local interest.
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The preparation of AP and IB chemistry teachers is discussed in detail in Chapter 4. DEFINITION OF ADVANCED STUDY IN CHEMISTRY FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS The chemistry panel agrees that the prerequisite first-year high school course in chemistry should provide students with an introduction to the atomic-scale view of matter, including its connection to macroscopic physical and chemical properties and to the language used to express these relationships, using the periodic table as an organizing entity.
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Thus, with sufficient practice in taking such examinations and enough drill on the major concepts that the examinations are likely to test, students can score well primarily by rote, without actually understanding the major concepts associated with the topics being tested. The panel also agrees that laboratory work should be a significant component of an advanced chemistry course, and assessment of laboratory skills should be a major part of the final examinations.
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Completing an AP chemistry course and passing the examination at the minimum level designated by individual colleges and universities may make a student eligible to earn college course credit, to place out of first-semester or first-year college chemistry, or to receive credit for completion of a general education or distribution requirement in science. Depending on the options available at the receiving institution and which option is selected, a student may be able to reduce the amount of matriculation time required for a degree, thereby saving tuition and other fees.
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Although there is variation among schools, the first-year chemistry course has generally been offered during the junior year. However, schools offering a range of AP science courses have helped foster a national shift toward offering biology to ninth-grade students and chemistry to tenth-grade students so the final 2 years of high school can be used for advanced work, including AP chemistry.
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The College Board recommends that students taking AP chemistry previously have completed 2 years of algebra and 1 year of geometry in addition to having taken the first-year chemistry course. To take AP chemistry as a junior, a student must complete these mathematics prerequisites by the end of the sophomore year.
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. These suggested textbooks are among those most frequently used in introductory college chemistry courses.
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LABORATORY WORK The average length of a high school class per day (42-58 minutes) poses a challenge with regard to the amount of material that can be presented and actually learned in advanced chemistry courses.
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The chemistry panel heard anecdotal accounts of AP chemistry teachers who omit or defer laboratory activities to review previous AP examinations. In such circumstances, laboratory work, if done at all, is crammed into the course after students have taken the AP examination.
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Thus, an overarching, largely unintended, but nevertheless real and perverse effect is that the exam-driven nature of both programs may cause the development of intellectual curiosity in students to fall victim to the pace of the courses all in the name of "rigor." The chemistry panel also is concerned that the current system of basing the AP chemistry course on typical or average general chemistry courses 20The panel notes that the IB's internal assessment component is not taught in a traditional manner and is consistent with the recommendations and emphases for teaching and learning in the NSES.
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17oeAPand IB chemistry courses also do not yet recognize the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of modern chemistry; its incorporation of highly important relatedfields, such as materials science and biochemistry; and the opportunities presented by such fields to teach related chemical concepts in a contextual manner. It is important to note that the College Board established the Commission on the Future of the Advanced Placement Program (CFAPP)
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3: The College Board's expectations for teacher qualifications are explicit: "if the objectives of a college-level general chemistry course are to be achieved, the teaching should be done by a teacher who has completed an undergraduate major program in chemistry including at least a year's work in physical chemistry" (CEEB, 1999a, p.
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Consequently, the percentage of those students taking an AP chemistry course who do not take the AP exam is not known. Accordingly, the panel believes that statements by the College Board about the quality of AP chemistry courses are suspect because they fail to account for the many AP courses nationwide in which large numbers of students may not take the examination.
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COURSE CONTENT AND EXAMINATIONS The 75 multiple-choice questions on the AP chemistry examination (Section I) match closely the objectives stated in the Acorn Book for an AP chemistry course.
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By using the approaches illustrated by these types of questions, the AP and IB programs would encourage teachers to teach in less algorithmic ways and students to learn in a different, more inquiry-based manner as recommended by the NSES. The AP examinations have yet to address the shift in increasing numbers of introductory college/university chemistry courses toward including applications in biochemists, materials science, or environmental chemistry.
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chemistry. To provide a chemistry course in line with the criteria for an advanced study course in chemistry at the high school level noted in Chapter 2, those who teach such a course must be adequately prepared.
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If such is the case, the very credibility of many AP and IB chemistry courses may be called into question. Within the past decade, a significant effort has been made nationally to change the way in which chemistry and other science teachers are certified (National Research Council [NRC]
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For an AP chemistry teacher in this situation, the AP assignment increases the number of required course preparations as well as the number of different laboratory preparations, along with their attendant difficulties. If this teacher also teaches nonchemistry courses (biology or physics, for example)
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As noted above, a deep conceptual understanding of the content and unifying concepts of chemistry is a critical requirement for effective teaching in the discipline. The panel encourages the College Board to provide a substantial and sustaining level of guidance and oversight for the preparation of teachers, student learning, and support by school systems so that high school AP chemistry courses can be of the high quality espoused by the College Board.
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. IB teacher workshops for the experimental sciences frequently focus on designing laboratory experiences that will enable students to meet the specific IA criteria.
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Statewide higher education systems in some states have well-articulated, shared policies among their institutions regarding credit and advanced placement for students meeting system-wide AP score standards; systems in other states leave the matter to the discretion of the institution or individual departments. Examples of the credit and advanced placement practices listed above are cited in the College and University Guide to the Advanced Placement Program booklet from the College Entrance Examination Board (19941.
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~re and Dynamics [Bodner, Rickard, and Spencer, 19991; The Chemical World: Concepts and Applications, 2nd edition, [Moore, Stanitski, Wood, Kotz, and Toest, 19981; Landis and Peace, [19981~; and the Discovery Chemistry curriculum from the College of the Holy Cross241. These textbooks and laboratory experiments also cover exciting new developments in materials science, such as those developed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.25 Because they offer a different focus and context for introductory chemistry courses, the authors of these texts have made the difficult decisions about what subject matter to Reemphasize so that faculty will have sufficient time to teach the concepts these texts emphasize.
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SUCCESS IN CHEMISTRY BEYOND DIE INTRODUCTORY LEVEL Given the variability of AP and IB courses as implemented in different high schools, as well as the variability among college chemistry courses at different institutions, the success of individual AP students in higher-level college courses is also likely to vary considerably. During the past 25 years, several studies (all conducted under the auspices of the College Board)
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CHEMISTRY discipline. While the data appear to indicate that AP students on average are well prepared, the methodology used in these studies makes it difficult to ascertain whether student success can be attributed to the AP program or to other factors, such as the colleges they attend, the classes they take, or their own academic backgrounds and abilities (see Appendix E)
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chemistry courses now being offered are taught effectively according to the expectations of the College Board and the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) in some, but by no means all, schools.
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2. A qualified advanced study chemistry instructor should have experience with effective current and emerging approaches to chemistry teaching and assessment in the subject and their applications to the AP and IB chemistry courses.
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7. AP and IB chemistry teachers should be participating members of professional organizations such as the National Science Teachers Association and the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Education.
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. College and university guide to the Advanced placement program.
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. Teacher's guide to the advanced placement course in chemistry.
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Charge to Content Panels: The content panels are asked to evaluate the AP and IB curricular, instructional, and assessment materials for their specific disciplines. Below is a list of questions that the content panels will use to examine the curriculum, laboratory experiences, and student assessments for their specific subject areas.
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of your discipline around which factual information and ideas should be organized to promote conceptual understanding in advanced study courses (e.g., Newton's laws in physics)
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V PREPARATION FOR FURTHER STUDY Advanced study at the high school level is often viewed as preparation for continued study at the college level or as a substitute for introductorylevel college courses.
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Committee on Undergraduate Science Education.
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He received his M.A.T. in science education from Webster College in Saint Louis and an A.B.
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Torrence is a science resource teacher at Montgomery Blair High School in Maryland, where she is actively involved with curriculum development for new and pre-existing courses, interdisciplinary cooperation with the mathematics and technology departments, and the implementation of assessment methodologies for the chemistry department. She has taught chemistry courses at the University of Maryland at College Park and was nominated for the Presidential Teaching Award.
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(1994~. College and universityg2~ide to the advanced placement program.
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(19941. Teacher'sguide to the Advanced placement course in chemistry.
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Committee on Undergraduate Science Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
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386 Suggested Modifications of Examination Questions This appendix presents examples of the chemistry panel's suggested modifications to the questions on the Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry 1999 examination, Section II, to make the questions more contextual; to probe more carefully the depth of student understanding; to seek to assess higher-order thinking skills; to require the applications of chemistry principles in an enlarged or new context; and to enjoin students to link concepts to chemical systems and macroscale phenomena, not merely see chemistry principles as isolated facts.
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j: CHEMISTRY (i) Determine the volume of 0.0120 MHCl~aq)
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388 CONTENT PANEL REPORT (i) Indicate whether the H atom emits energy or whether it absorbs energy during the transition.
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CHEMISTRY AP CHEMISTRY 1999, SECTION II, PART B QllESTION 4 Original Question Write the formulas to show the reactants and products for any FIVE of the laboratory situations described below.
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390 CONTENT PANEL REPORT (b) Solid ammonium nitrate is heated to temperatures above 300°C.
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Question 6 of the AP chemistry exam, which deals with thermodynamic principles and KMT concepts, could be directed to higher levels of thinking in part (a) by relating a simple system, such as an ice cube melting, to enthalpy, entropy, and free energy.
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392 CONTENT PANEL REPORT Suggested Modification The panel suggests the following modified question: Modification 1. Do not have all solutions be 0.10 M
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fine?
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394 CONTENT PANEL REPORT This is an example of a laboratory-related item.
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4. How much is information technology being integrated into advanced study courses, and what are the requirements for achieving such integration?
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How well do these students fare in the course and subsequently in college chemistry courses?
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