Article pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Past, Present, and Future of AP Chemistry: A Brief History of Course and Exam Alignment Efforts Serena Magrogan* Advanced Placement Curriculum and Content Development, The College Board, Duluth, Georgia 30096, United States S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: As part of the Advanced Placement (AP) Program’s commitment to continually enhance alignment with current best practices in college-level learning, the AP Program is currently evaluating and redesigning courses and exams, one of which launched during the 2013−2014 academic school year: AP chemistry. The history of the AP chemistry course and exam, the current snapshot of the teachers and students participating in the redesigned course and exam, and the anticipated future changes to the course are described in this article. This contribution is part of a special issue on teaching introductory chemistry in the context of the advanced placement chemistry course redesign. KEYWORDS: General Public, First-Year Undergraduate/General, Public Understanding/Outreach, Curriculum, Inquiry-Based/Discovery Learning, Testing/Assessment, Student-Centered Learning, High School/Introductory Chemistry
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INTRODUCTION The College Board, funded by the National Science Foundation, collaborated with subject matter experts, learning scientists, and veteran high school chemistry educators to redesign the Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry course curriculum to meet the recommendations provided in a 2002 report by the National Research Council.1 The National Research Council (NRC) implored the College Board to engage in the redesign of science and math classes to promote deep conceptual understanding with few topics in more depth rather than mere exposure to subject content. Additionally, the NRC suggested the College Board engage in a curriculum redesign effort which would reflect research on how students understand and learn discipline-specific concepts and skills and emphasized student application of critical thinking skills and science practices. Moreover, the College Board acknowledged the accelerated pace of technological advances and the prevalent application of chemistry in innovation, design, and industry. As a result, the College Board ensured the redesigned AP Chemistry course content, exam, and curricular requirements promoted student interest, motivation, and success in advanced study of the discipline. Even though the College Board engaged in a robust redesign process for the AP Chemistry course and exam from 2006 to 2013, the course and exam underwent a series of smaller revisions throughout the course’s near 60 year history.
to higher education opportunities and experiences. One such study resulted in recommendations for high schools and higher education institutions to collaborate to avoid repetition of high school coursework with early college coursework and to ensure motivated, prepared high school students receive opportunities to engage in advanced coursework or to enter college early. Additionally, the FAE funded a committee to develop and pilot 11 college-level curricula and standards for implementation at the high school level. By 1956, such courses, one of which was AP Chemistry, were launched and the first exams administered nationwide.3 The curricula for the initial 11 courses offered by the College Board were developed by collaborative efforts from faculty members of 12 high schools and 12 higher education institutions (Bowdoin, Brown, Carleton, Haverford, Kenyon, M.I.T., Middlebury, Oberlin, Swarthmore, Wabash, Wesleyan, and Williams).2 The College Board contracted with the Educational Testing Service to develop, administer, and grade the exams, which would take no more than 3 h and would cost students a $10 fee. As the demand for AP exams increased over the next several decades, the College Board began providing a brief description of college-course topics and breaking down the percentage of those topic assessed by both multiple choice and free response questions on the exam. Teachers used the course and exam description and percentages of topics assessed to plan instruction and activities to help students achieve scores of 3 or higher to potentially earn college credit or placement out of the equivalent general chemistry course and into the subsequent course. For AP Chemistry, the percentage of the course content to be assessed on the exam roughly remained the same throughout the years of 1984−2013:4
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THE BEGINNING During the Cold War era, Americans concerned themselves with maintaining a more educated populace, a democratic society, and a healthy economy fueled by innovation and ingenuity.2 In response to the growing need for people of talent and professionals with a graduate level of knowledge and skills in the areas of sciences and engineering, the Ford Foundation created the Fund for the Advancement of Education (FAE).2 In 1951, the FAE funded studies to determine the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of the pipeline of high school students © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
1. Structure of Matter (20%) 2. States of Matter (20%) Special Issue: Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry
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Table 1. Comparison of Exam Content Proportions in the Multiple Choice Section of the AP Chemistry Exam
3. Reactions (35−40%) 4. Descriptive Chemistry (10−15%) 5. Laboratory (5−10%)
Distribution of Exam Content by Topic
The legacy exam, from 1984 to 2013 was structured with two sections: multiple choice and free or open-ended response questions. The multiple choice section contained 75 questions and provided students access to the periodic table of elements but not a calculator or formula chart to guide student answer choices. The free response section evolved from six to nine and then back to six free response questions from the years 1984− 2013. Students were allowed to use a calculator, formula chart, and periodic table on the first three questions of the free response section. The first three questions usually pertained to equilibrium (acid−base or gas), kinetics, or electrochemistrybased questions involving multiple step mathematical routines to solve. The fourth question required students to predict products and write balanced equations, whereas the remaining questions pertained to molecular structures, atomic theory, intermolecular forces, and thermodynamics.
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AP CHEMISTRY COURSE AND EXAM: MINOR REVISIONS Even though students were provided with a periodic table of elements, a formula chart, and table of standard reduction potentials for the exam and teachers provided students with instruction and activities pertaining to the five main topics of the course, students were still expected to memorize algorithms for solving multistep problems, rules for predicting reactions, rules for drawing/naming complex organic molecules, flame colors, solubility rules, and even exceptions to rules. As professional organizations, educational research, and psychometric data supported more effective student learning and assessment through conceptual versus algorithmic understanding, strengthened mental models of the particulate nature of matter, and engaging in more laboratory investigations, the AP Chemistry course and exam began to change.2 For example, nuclear chemistry, on the exam, was emphasized in two basic areas: kinetics and balancing nuclear reactions. Such emphasis decreased on the multiple choice section of the assessment from 1984 to 2008 (see Table 1), and balancing nuclear reactions ultimately was phased out with the redesigned curriculum in 2013. However, organic functional groups and reactions such as esterification, addition, substitution, and polymerization increased on the multiple choice section on the exam from 1984 to 2008. Even though laboratory-based multiple choice questions decreased, such lab-based questions were maintained on the free response question section of the exam (see Table SI1 in the Supporting Information). The percent of exam questions dedicated to each topic changed over the years, and such change was driven by the exam development committee consisting of three higher education faculty members who taught the introductory chemistry course and three AP teachers who taught the AP Chemistry course for a number of years. For the purpose of informing the decisions to make changes, the faculty members on the exam development committee frequently cited current chemical education research on the most appropriate way to assess students as well as the trends in content and pedagogical changes for the introductory chemistry course across higher education institutions in the United States.5,6 Additional changes to the course and exam resulted in the inclusion of more particulate representations on the multiple
Content Topics
1984 Exam Version, %
2008 Exam Version, %
Difference, %a
Stoichiometry/Mole Relationships Gas Laws/Kinetic Theory Atomic Theory/Transition Metals Bonding/Intermolecular Forces Periodic Properties Solutions/Phase Diagrams Rates and Equilibrium Precipitation Acid/Base/Buffer Electrochemistry General Prior Knowledge Thermodynamics Qualitative Reasoning Equation Writing/Reactions Nuclear Organic Laboratory Total
5.9 5.9 5.9 9.5 1.2 9.4 7.1 2.4 8.2 10.6 9.4 5.9 7.1 5.9 2.4 0.9 2.4 100.1
13.3 10.7 13.3 12.0 4.0 16.0 10.7 0.0 8.0 2.7 1.3 4.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 4.0 0.0 100.0
7.4 4.8 7.4 2.5 2.8 6.6 3.6 −2.4 −0.2 −7.9 −8.1 −1.9 −7.1 −5.9 −2.4 3.1 −2.4
a
Negative differences indicate content related to this topic decreased from the multiple-choice section of exams (from 1984−2008) and was either removed from later exams or was assessed via the free-response section of later exams.
choice section of the exam and the requirement of students performing 22 recommended laboratory investigations throughout participation in the course. Accordingly, more free response questions on the exam pertaining to laboratories occurred from 1990 to 2013. Furthermore, such small revisions included the implementation of a calculator policy to accompany the course and the exam design (ref 4, pp 9−10): The policy regarding the use of calculators on the AP Chemistry Exam was developed to address the rapid expansion of the capabilities of scientific calculators, which include not only programming and graphing functions but also the availability of stored equations and other data. For the section of the exam in which calculators are permitted, students should be allowed to use the calculators to which they are accustomed, except as noted below. On the other hand, they should not have access to information in their calculators that is not available to other students, if that information is needed to answer the questions Associated with the calculator policy governing the type of calculator used, the exam changed over time to allow students to use an approved calculator only on the first part of the freeresponse section of the exam to work the quantitative questions pertaining to equilibrium, kinetics, solubility, and electrochemical cells. This change required the test developers to confirm the multiple choice questions were written in such a way to be accessible and doable to students using mental math techniques.
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AP CHEMISTRY COURSE AND EXAM: REDESIGN The National Research Council (NRC) report provided recommendations for improving International Baccalaureate (IB) and AP math and science courses, including AP Chemistry.1 The NRC report recommended that the primary B
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed500096f | J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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• Collaborating with higher education institutions to guarantee our commitment to college-quality work remains paramount and ensure these institutions receive students that can truly contribute to their communities with new thoughts and ideas and by • Conducting a College Curriculum Study (in 2009) to evaluate current college course content and its alignment to the content and learning objectives within the revised AP Chemistry curriculum framework. The College Board redesigned the AP Chemistry course description into a curriculum framework for the purpose of providing transparency to all teachers on how students would be assessed through learning objectives and providing direction of what content of a college text or similar college course should be covered to prepare students for such an assessment. Additionally, the Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee (CDAC) developed the new curriculum framework (CF) to focus on concepts, enduring understandings, and science practices rather than checklists of required content. The revised course’s concepts, content, and science skills were compared with those of introductory college-level chemistry courses. The College Curriculum Study confirmed that the concepts and supporting content in the curriculum framework were aligned with those taught in introductory chemistry courses. Upon confirmation of the alignment of the redesigned curriculum framework with that of introductory college chemistry courses, the Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee (CDAC) developed a new exam design and associated multiple choice and free response questions to reflect the change in assessing conceptual versus an algorithmic understanding of chemistry. 7 Additionally, the CDAC developed a list of new curricular requirements for teachers to follow when developing their syllabi for the redesigned course, which included the requirement of students performing 16 hands on laboratory investigations, with six of the 16 being of the guided inquiry format. Upon completion of the exam design, sample assessment questions, curriculum framework, and curricular requirements, the redesigned course was put through a validation process where 60 higher education chemistry faculty, from across the U.S., evaluated the curriculum framework to • Ensure the revised AP Chemistry course represents a strong correlation with college and university expectations of students in subsequent chemistry courses • Identify areas of diversion, to better understand higher ed. Faculty expectations of what is critical for success (day one) in the subsequent courses in the major and • Identify lab experiences and use of instrumentation required for an AP Chemistry physical and studentdirected lab component to be on par with that of the college experience.8 In conjunction with the higher education validation process, the College Board presented the course revision components to a group of 300+ AP Chemistry teachers to • Explain why and the AP Chemistry Course changed by introducing the new curriculum • Show how the CDAC reduced the breadth of the course • Describe how the exam ties to the curriculum and will test students’ skills and conceptual knowledge • Explain how the College Board will support teachers as they begin to teach the redesigned course
goal of AP math and science courses should be to help students develop a deep understanding of the unifying concepts, principles, and science practices in chemistry. The redesigned course should emphasize deeper conceptual understanding through inquiry-based and student-directed laboratories with emphasis on qualitative understanding instead of memorization of content. Additionally, the redesigned course should integrate science processes and quantitative literacy skills with the content to make the learning objectives of the course. Furthermore, the curricular requirements should emphasize instruction in advanced courses to engage students in inquiry by providing opportunities to experiment, analyze information critically, make conjectures and argue about their validity, and solve problems. Using such recommendations, the College Board developed a plan to redesign all the AP science courses with the following goal of producing a more inclusive and more engaging program of study for each AP science discipline by identifying: • The concepts to be studied in depth and measured on the exams • The need for a reduction in breadth of course content and an increase in depth of understanding • The essential reasoning and inquiry skills that are to be supported with instruction and measured on the exams • Emerging areas of research that capture essential concepts within the discipline and engage diverse student populations • The minimum resources required to support these practices To that end, the College Board engaged a group of learning scientists, subject matter experts, and veteran AP teachers in the work of identifying and articulating the science practices which would be paired with the content in the revised curriculum frameworks for all AP science courses. Accordingly, the depth and relevance of the redesigned AP Chemistry course and exam would be based on decreasing the assessment of students’ ability to memorize content and emphasizing the assessment of students applying their conceptual understanding of content through the following science practices:7 • Using representations and models to communicate scientific phenomena and solve scientific problems • Using mathematics appropriately • Engaging in scientific questioning to extend thinking or to guide investigations within the context of the ap course • Planning and implementing data collection strategies in relation to a particular scientific question • Performing data analysis and evaluation of evidence • Working with scientific explanations and theories and • Connecting and relating knowledge across various scales, concepts and representations in and across domains. After the redesign commission determined the science practices to underpin the redesign of all the AP science courses, the College Board engaged in the following steps to redesign the AP Chemistry curriculum framework by • Identifying higher education subject matter experts, learning scientists, and high school AP teachers (Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee) to develop the big ideas, enduring understandings, essential knowledge details, and learning objectives in the curriculum framework C
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Table 2. Schools, Students, and Score Receiving Institutions Participating in the 2013 AP Science Exams Administration 9th grade
10th grade
11th grade
12th grade
Not High School
