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: Physics
Content Panel Report: Physics
Pages 397-490
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From page 399... ...
Panel members included experienced college and university physics professors noted for their work in physics education, as well as high school physics teachers (for biographical sketches, see Appendix B)
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400 CONTENT PANEL REPORT Chapter 2 but is flexible enough to be implemented in a school's or district's specific context. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 examine three topics of importance to the panel's review of advanced study programs in physics: Chapter 4 looks at the crucial role played by teaching and learning; Chapter 5 summarizes changing emphases in physics and their impact on advanced physics instruction; and Chapter 6 addresses the linkage between advanced high school physics programs and college physics programs.
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PREREQUISITES FOR AN ADVANCED HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAM The panel recognizes that the level of preparation of students entering advanced physics programs varies widely from high school to high school. Nevertheless, we believe that there are two fundamental prerequisites most entering students should meet: · Prior to enrolling in an advanced physics course in high school, students should have studied the physics that is suggested as a requirement for high school graduation in the NSES (NRC, 19961.
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The panel encourages high school physics teachers to work closely with the mathematics departments of their schools to develop the necessary courses of instruction. Mathematics is the language used to describe the fundamental laws of physics.
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Mechanics provides an ideal framework for achieving the objectives cited above. At the same time, familiarity with mechanics is universally expected of students entering college who have completed an advanced high school physics program.
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The primary goal of the study of Newtonian mechanics is to develop conceptual understanding, rather than the ability to perform complex mathematical manipulations. For example, it is not necessary for advanced high school students to learn how to calculate the moment of inertia of a cylinder about some given axis, but it is important for them to understand rotational kinetic energy and angular momentum.
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From page 405... ...
There would be less emphasis on formal mathematics and more on conceptual understanding, but the general level of the treatment of the physics would be the same as that of current AP Physics C Mechanics. All the important physics currently found in AP Physics C Mechanics would still be covered and tested on the final examination.
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From page 406... ...
In describing these options, we assume that students have already completed the new common mechanics unit discussed above. Our goal is not to specify these curricula completely; that is a task for other organizations, such as the College Board and the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO)
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From page 407... ...
Therefore, if the course were used as a semester option, several of these very interesting topics could be covered in greater depth, consistent with the fundamental goal of achieving deep conceptual understanding. Special and General Relativity.
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Such enrichment is an excellent way to generate enthusiasm for further study in physics, which, as noted above, is a key goal of any advanced high school physics program. Examples of such enrichment might include a course on special and general relativity along the lines of Taylor and Wheeler's (2001)
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available. · Teachers with sufficient expertise to teach the courses might not be In addition to the above difficulties, no mechanism currently exists to validate that these course offerings provide the appropriate depth of understanding for advanced high school physics programs.
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The panel believes that advanced physics courses should provide additional experiences for students in formulating their own conjectures and explanations, as well as in making the connections between real-world phenomena and the concepts, principles, and theories developed by the scientific community. 5As noted earlier, there are special circumstances under which it may be appropriate for students to study advanced physics as a first-year physics course.
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From page 411... ...
The panel believes that the issue should be looked at from this point of view: What evidence is there that cookbook labs are of sufficient value to justify the enormous amount of time spent on them in physics programs across the nation? As far as we know, no evidence comes anywhere close to justifying this huge investment of effort.
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College Park, MD: American Association of Physics Teachers. · Sokoloff, D.R., Laws, P
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The panel also recommends that teachers of advanced courses be familiar with the AAPT's position papers on Lee Role of LaboratoryActivities in High School Physics and 17' e Goals of the Introductory Physics Laboratory, which describe aspects of the goals of experimental work in more detail.9 The way the experience is designed is more important than the specific topic. For example, a lab dealing with pendulum motion could be constructed as a rote exercise in data gathering to verify the dependence of the period of the pendulum's oscillatory motion on the length of the pendulum, but it would be better to design the experience as scientific inquiry.
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From page 414... ...
In particular, we draw the reader's attention to the internal assessment component of the IB physics program discussed in Chapter 3. Designing Gooct Written Examinations A good written examination in an advanced physics program should: · Emphasize conceptual questions, rather than mathematical techniques.
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Scoring Techniques .~ The scoring of written examinations must emphasize the evaluation of student understanding. A rigid scoring rubric in which points are awarded for highly specific correct responses to small parts of each question is not appropriate because it reduces the reader's ability to respond to student thinking (both correct and incorrect)
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From page 416... ...
The panel is unanimous in asserting that this range is too broad; students who earn scores at the upper end of the range are better qualified than those at the lower end of the range. While this wide score range might serve a purpose in the current AP Physics program by allowing teachers to focus on some aspects of the curriculum at the expense of others without their students being penalized, a narrower score range would be more appropriate in the context of the more manageable curriculum proposed by the panel.
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PHYSICS as well as students without AP experience in their second college physics course. This is particularly troubling in view of the fact that students with AP experience usually are among the most successful academically and normally outperform non-AP students.
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Today, the AP and IB physics programs constitute the two most significant factors in defining what is meant by advanced study of physics in the United States. Most students entering the postsecondary education system each year who are identified as having completed an advanced physics course have participated in these two programs.
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This factual base for AP physics is determined by the College Board through a poll of a large number of colleges to determine the content of their first-year physics courses (College Entrance Examination Board [CEEB]
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To better illustrate the difference between these two kinds of knowledge, Box 3-1 presents a case study done by Professor Eric Mazur of Harvard University, a member of this panel (Mazur, 19971. Degree to Which AP Physics Courses Are Organized Around Key Concepts to Promote Conceptual Understanding AS ct~scussed in Chapter 2, Newtonian mechanics should provide the conceptual foundation for all advanced physics programs.
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and conventional question (bottom) on the subject of tic circuits These questions revere given on a written examination in low.
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did worse on the conventional question.This trend was confirmed on many similar pairs of problems during the remainder of the semester: Students tend to perform significantly better when solving standard textbook problems than when solving conceptual problems covering the same subject. This simple example exposes a number of difficulties in science education.
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From page 424... ...
Extent to which the AP Physics Cumcutum and Relatect Laboratory Experiences Encourage Students and Teachers to Make Connections Among the Various Disciplines In Science and Mathematics The connection between physics and mathematics is very strong, and both AP physics courses call upon students to use their mathematical skills to the fullest. Indeed, it is not unusual for students to say after they have taken AP physics that they appreciate the great value of mathematics for the first time.
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From page 425... ...
Extent to Which Final Assessments In AP Physics Measure or Emphasize Students' Unclerst:ancI'ng and Application of Concepts Many of the questions on previous AP physics examinations value technique over conceptual understanding. However, the trend on recent AP physics examinations has definitely been in the direction of increasing the emphasis on conceptual understanding as it should be.
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From page 426... ...
Skill in this kind of translation is an important indicator of deep conceptual understanding of physical principles, and its assessment with examination questions is entirely appropriate. Second is the manipulation of the mathematical models to arrive at final results.
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PHYSICS 2. A charge Q
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428 CONTENT PANEL REPORT A charge Q3 = -4 x lo-6 coulomb is brought from a very distant point by an external force and placed at the origin.
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PHYSI CS i \ 'A ____' 6. (10 points)
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Summary of the Panel's Evaluation of the AP Physics Program · The AP Physics B program is too broad and should be eliminated as a 1-year course. · The mechanics components of AP Physics B and C should be merged into a single common mechanics component (see Chapter 29.
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PHYSICS _' If_ L'/~/~//~/~////~//~' Mech.
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432 CONTENT PANEL REPORT (d) On the axes below, sketch a graph of the car's velocity v as ~ function of time t.
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Again, this practice contrasts sharply with the AP program, in which any student who pays the examination fee can take an AP examination in any subject. .~ Degree to Which the Fact Base of Information Provided by the IB Curriculum and Related Laboratory Experiences Is Adequate for Advanced High School Study in Physics There is no question that the factual base of information provided by the IB physics curriculum and related laboratory experiences is fully adequate for a good advanced program.
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Degree to Which IB Physics Courses Are Orgar~izect Around Key Concepts to Promote Conceptual Understanding As noted above, the panel believes Newtonian mechanics should provide the conceptual foundation for all advanced physics programs. IB physics contains a strong Newtonian mechanics component.
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From page 436... ...
Therefore, the opportunities advanced students have to apply their knowledge to problems in a variety of contexts depends upon the particular IB physics program in which they are enrolled. Extent to Which the IB Physics Curriculum and Related Laboratory Experiences Encourage Students and Teachers to Make Connections Among the Various Disciplines in Science and Mathematics As noted earlier, the connection between physics and mathematics is very strong, and the IB physics course calls upon students to use substantial mathematical skills.
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From page 437... ...
Nevertheless, the written IB physics examinations suffer from many of the same problems discussed in Chapter 2: · Too many questions have multiple parts that lead students through the solution. · Insufficient attention is paid to reasoning in the scoring rubrics.
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From page 438... ...
Extent to Which Assessments in IB Physics Measure or Emphasize Students' Understanding and Application of Concepts As mentioned in the preceding section, IB physics examinations generally place more emphasis on conceptual understanding than their AP counterparts, as illustrated by the two examples given below. However, this emphasis is still insufficient to enable a reliable assessment of such understanding for the reasons discussed earlier.
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CONTENT PANEL REPORT A-? ; FIGURE 3~ November 1999 IS Physics HL, paper 2, question B3 Its ~~= ~ h¢~,~¢,^' .
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442 CONTENT PANEL REPORT am: _ _ 7~ ~tion 83 cont`~`J .
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From page 443... ...
PHYSICS N~(# ~$~ ~4 83 awe ~a~27 (tif) C~lout~le 111~ d[stanq; of ~4 S°~1 dims amp Sac cam of Me ~~ .
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From page 444... ...
· The IB Physics course contains no calculus and therefore cannot delve as deeply as AP Physics C into electromagnetic theory. · The IB physics examinations are more conceptually based than the AP physics examinations and give students sufficient time to think but suffer from many of the same faults of construction as the AP exams.
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From page 445... ...
Nevertheless, the panel is convinced that the success of a given advanced high school physics program depends much more on the teachers and students than on the curriculum or other general program characteristics. We stress that in truth there is no such thing as the Advanced Placement (AP)
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From page 446... ...
It is difficult to see how enough well-qualified college students can be attracted to the teaching of advanced physics courses when a similar amount of training would allow them to earn much higher salaries in other positions. Low salaries not only make it difficult to attract people to the teaching profession but also lead to a general lack of respect for teachers.
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From page 447... ...
The panel urges the cooperation of the entire physics community in the recruitment and training of physics teachers who meet those standards. In particular, we join the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and other physics organizations in calling on college physics and engineering faculty to take an active role in the training of teachers for advanced high school physics programs.~9 The panel concurs with the opinion of Robert Watson, director of the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation, that if science departments in colleges and universities were more hospitable to students who wanted to become teachers, not only would those students be better prepared to go into teaching but a much stronger cadre of students would be attracted to teaching (NRC, 1997a, p.
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From page 448... ...
Preparation Needed to Teach Advanced Physics Courses Effectively There is no doubt that to teach advanced physics effectively a strong background in physics content is absolutely essential. Teachers who do not understand the subject themselves cannot possibly develop deep conceptual understanding of physical principles in their students.
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From page 449... ...
Students need to understand not only the concepts of physics but also the nature of knowledge and learning (Halloun, 1998; Hammer, 1995; Hewson, 1985; McDermott, 1991; Redish, Steinberg, and Saul, 1998; Reif and Larkin, 1991; White end Frederiksen, 19981. Many students arrive et physics courses, including advanced courses, expecting to learn by memorizing formulas disconnected from each other, as well as from the students' experiences of the physical world.
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From page 450... ...
Drawing out, evaluating, and working to improve student understandings is a highly individualized process that is nearly impossible to perform adequately in oversized classes. These admonitions from education research are not controversial, but their generality may allow multiple, superficial, and possibly conflicting in20For an extended discussion and example of diagnosis in a high school physics class, see Hammer (1997)
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From page 451... ...
The panel's second concern is that the emphasis in advanced courses on solving typical textbook problems as opposed to conceptual discussion and debate tends to encourage rather than challenge student perceptions that physics knowledge comprises disconnected factual units rather than a principled system of ideas. Although skill in problem solving is an important objective of any advanced physics program, conceptual understanding must be the objective of highest priority.
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From page 452... ...
To be clear, the panel is not endorsing TIMSS as the way to measure success in physics education; rather, we believe the lower scores of American students are a good reason to explore what can be learned from the methods of physics instruction used in other TIMSS countries. Perhaps the most obvious difference between physics instruction in the United States and other countries is the number of secondary school years devoted to physics study.
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From page 453... ...
A second significant area of difference between physics instruction in the United States and other TIMSS countries lies in the recruiting, training, professional development, and status of physics teachers. The salary situation for American secondary school physics teachers is particularly troubling (as noted earlier)
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THE STllDENTS OF AP AND IB PHYSICS This section examines how the nature of the student body affects educational outcomes in advanced physics instruction. The students who take AP and IB physics courses come from a wide variety of academic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
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From page 455... ...
Moreover, as noted above, some of these students may experience an academic awakening when provided with such opportunities. The panel believes it is the job of the school staff to identify those underprepared students who are likely candidates for such experiences and admit them to the advanced physics program regardless of prerequisites.
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From page 456... ...
To be successful, an advanced physics program must adapt itself to the particular high school environment and find a way to use whatever time students can devote to the program to best educational advantage. Competing activities that place demands on the time of advanced physics students include part-time employment; athletics; community service; music and drama; college visits; television and movies; computer activities, including Web surfing; family vacations; and social events.
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24This evidence is not specific to advanced high school physics courses. However, it is reasonable to expect that results from introductory college-level courses should generally apply.
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· A Modeling Method for Hig1~-School Physics Instruction (Wells, Hestenes, and Swackhamer, 1995) focuses on having students actively engaged in defining, building, understanding, and testing mathematical models of physical phenomena.
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From page 459... ...
The focus is on developing conceptual models of electrical effects, particularly in circuits.26 · C3P: Comprehensive Conceptual Curriculum for Physics is a high school curriculum that draws on materials from a variety of sources, including videos, inquiry methods, and laboratory experiments.27 · Although not traditionally part of advanced physics courses in high schools, quantum physics may well be used as an optional or enrichment topic. A set of materials called Visual Quantum Mechanics has been developed by Dean Zollman and colleagues in the Kansas State physics education research group.
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. 29Further information can be found at the American Association of Physics Teachers Web site by going to http://www.aapt.org [4/17/2002]
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From page 461... ...
Computer simulations are also beginning to be used as a way of allowing students to explore actively the predictions and range of validity of various models of the physical world. These tools help introductory physics students build a better conceptual understanding of physical phenomena by actively exploring models and their predictions.
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From page 462... ...
Teachers of advanced high school physics courses could form such groups to share and enrich their pedagogical skills. The opportunity now exists to create a national electronic clearinghouse of information relating to secondary school physics instruction.
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· PHYSHARE (Sharing Resources for US Physics Teachers) has about 600 subscribers and focuses on high school physics teaching issues.
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From page 464... ...
Literature searches are now often done electronically. These developments have implications for the education of secondary school students currently engaged in the advanced study of physics.
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From page 465... ...
The panel recommends that CIT be used in the teaching of advanced high school physics to highlight current state-ofthe-art research, thereby encouraging young people to join the nation's scientific workforce. Future Uses of Car in Advanced Physics Programs There are a number of ways in which CIT poses challenges to be met in future advanced physics instruction.
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From page 466... ...
Potential Use of Car to Administer Final Examinations in Future A`ivanced Physics Programs In the not-too-distant future, C1T may be able to provide an efficient means of administering and scoring final examinations in advanced programs. If such a process is implemented, the panel makes two recommendations: · It is absolutely essential that students retain the ability to return to and modify their answers to previous questions as they take the examination.
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From page 467... ...
It therefore makes sense to examine the two dominant advanced physics programs to determine the extent to which they provide suitable training to students along interdisciplinary lines. The AP physics program appears to stick closely to the traditional curriculum that has been the hallmark of the field during the last 50 years.
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From page 468... ...
COMPARISON OF AP AND IB PHYSICS WITH EDUCATION STANDARDS Extent to Which the AP arid IB Physics Programs Refiect the Recomn;~endations of the National Science Education Standards The panel did not have sufficient time to make a detailed assessment of the extent to which the AP and IB Physics programs incorporate the recommendations of the NSES (NRC, 19961. The short answer to the question is "not much" As noted earlier, IB physics encourages interdisciplinary connections to some extent as recommended by the NSES.
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From page 469... ...
Certainly, it is desirable that any student undertaking the study of advanced physics in high school have met the NCTM standards before beginning that course. It should also be noted that high school physics courses in general, and advanced physics courses in particular, help students solidify their knowledge and skills in mathematics.
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From page 470... ...
physics examinations perform in physics courses beyond the introductory level as well as, or perhaps even a bit better than, students who first encounter introductory physics in the standard college or university course (see, for example, College Entrance Examination Board, 1994c)
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DEPENDENCE OF COLLEGE PHYSICS PROGRAMS ON KNOWIEDGE GAINED FROM ADVANCED HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS PROGRAMS From the point of view of many college physics departments, there are serious problems with the interface between advanced high school programs and college physics programs. The content of AP courses is designed as an aggregate of the content of many large introductory science courses at major universities.
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From page 472... ...
IMPROVEMENTS IN COT TINGE PHYSICS INSTRUCTION THOUGH A BEl~l~R INTERFACE WITH ACED HIGH SCHOOL PROPS College courses are subject to the same criticism of excessive breadth that has been made of advanced high school programs, as has been emphasized many times in the physics education research literature.3~ These courses often fail both in improving students' conceptual understanding and in motivating them to continue. If high school programs of advanced study were to focus on a somewhat narrower but widely shared range of content, and if the learning process were to emphasize conceptual understanding, college and university physics courses could evolve to build on that content and understanding.
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From page 473... ...
RECOMMENDATIONS The panel makes the following recommendations for creating a reliable interface between advanced high school and college physics programs: · As discussed in Chapter 2, all advanced high school programs should seek to develop competence in Newtonian mechanics that emphasizes deep conceptual understanding, even if the coverage of other topics must be reduced. · Final assessments must be modified to test for conceptual understanding and the ability to apply basic physical principles to situations not previously encountered.
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2. All advanced physics programs should aim to develop deep conceptual understanding of me topics studied.
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From page 475... ...
The study of Newtonian mechanics provides an ideal framework for developing the scientific habits of mind and deep conceptual understanding that are the primary goals of advanced physics instruction. Since familiarity with Newtonian mechanics is universally expected of students who have completed an advanced high school physics program, it is logical to create a standardized mechanics unit to serve as the foundation of all advanced physics study.
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From page 476... ...
experiences should be included in all advanced physics programs. There is ample evidence that traditional "cookbook" laboratories do not meet this standard.
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From page 477... ...
With the continued growth of advanced physics programs across the nation, there is a severe shortage of qualified teachers for such programs. The panel endorses a concerted effort by all elements of the physics com477
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From page 478... ...
The panel stresses that implementations of advanced physics programs differ widely from school to school. The way in which a program is implemented by a given teacher is often much more important than the choice of which program to implement (see Chapter 49.
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15. Fairness must be ensured on future computerized final assessments for advanced physics programs.
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College Park, MD: American Association of Physics Teachers. Eisenkraft, A
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traditional methods: A six-thousandstudent survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics, 66 (1)
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. Resource letter PER-1: Physics education research.
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. A modeling method for highschool physics instruction.
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From page 484... ...
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. The content panels will use these questions to issue a report to the committee about the effectiveness of the AP and IB programs for educating able high school students in their respective disciplines.
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From page 485... ...
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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1. To what extent do the AP and IB curricula, assessments, and related laboratory experiences in your discipline serve as adequate and appropriate bases for success in college courses beyond the introductory level?
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In this position, he interacted with high school physics teachers and also has worked
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Dr. Morse has been recognized for his teaching with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching, the Tandy Technology Scholar Award, the American Association for Physics Teachers (AAPT)
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PHYSICS Robin Spiral (committee liarson and chair) is a teacher of Honors and Advanced Placement Physics at The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida.
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