The AP Chemistry Course Audit: A Fertile Ground for Identifying and

(1) The criticism of the AP science classes can be generalized as the curriculum was too broad and the exam had become too predictable. .... This data...
0 downloads 9 Views 256KB Size
Download PDF
Article pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc

The AP Chemistry Course Audit: A Fertile Ground for Identifying and Addressing Misconceptions about the Course and Process Richard W. Schwenz†,* and Sheldon Miller‡ †

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado 80639 United States Department of Chemistry and Physics, Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19118, United States

‡

ABSTRACT: The advanced placement course audit was implemented to standardize the college-level curricular and resource requirements for AP courses. While the process has had this effect, it has brought with it misconceptions about how much the College Board intends to control what happens within the classroom, what information is required to be included in a syllabus submission, and how far the audit requirements extend. Each of these misconceptions will be addressed in the context of a historical view of the process, and some advice for teachers in preparing their AP chemistry syllabus for review will be provided. This contribution is part of a special issue on teaching introductory chemistry in the context of the advanced placement (AP) chemistry course redesign. KEYWORDS: High School/Introductory Chemistry, First-Year Undergraduate/General, Curriculum, Standards National/State

■

INTRODUCTION The Advanced Placement (AP) course audit has been a source of contention since it was first proposed and implemented. Many experienced teachers have objected to the audit on the basis that they already knew what was required for teaching the course. Less experienced teachers have found the audit to be helpful because it has clarified the College Board’s expectations. Some teachers have been able to leverage AP course requirements to ensure that their classes are adequately resourced with appropriate instructional materials. Prior to the implementation of the course audit in 2007, high school and college members of the College Board began to make observations that high school transcripts were showing that students were taking AP courses that were not part of the official suite of AP courses that existed at the time. In addition, observations were being made that suggested a lack of uniformity in the teaching of the course. For example, a range of levels of chemistry textbooks were in use. The textbooks ranged from the first year high school textbooks through general/ organic/biochemistry textbooks to texts for college science majors and textbooks for an organic chemistry course. The first two examples did not expose students to chemistry at a high enough level, and the last example did not cover the breadth and depth of content in the AP Course Description that was current at the time. The first proposal that was made for a course audit was extremely extensive. Among the proposed requirements for AP Chemistry was one for the teacher to have a degree in chemistry with required postgraduate work. The school administration would also be required to sign off on an explicit requirement for a double period for laboratory, adequate teacher preparation time, and continuing professional development for the teacher. The proposed course audit was viewed as excessively cumbersome for teachers and schools. As a result, the requirements were refined to focus on core curricular and resource requirements outlined in the AP Course Description. Appropriate review protocols were developed, and the online © 2014 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

submission and review system was implemented. In all subjects, the College Board recognized that there is a diversity in approaches to teaching the subject matter and that as a basic principle, this diversity of approaches should be valued as long as appropriate college level materials were used and the content and skills defined by the AP Course Description were taught. Subsequent years have resulted in significant improvements to the online submission and review system through which both the teachers and reviewers interact, in hopes of simplifying the process. The AP Course Audit was first implemented in the 2007− 2008 school year, with over 120,000 teachers submitting over 140,000 syllabi for review in 37 subjects. Clearly, this project was a massive undertaking in setting review standards, training reviewers, and maintaining alignment across reviewers. For AP Chemistry in the first year, teachers submitted over 7000 syllabi for review. Successful completion of the course audit grants the school permission to use the AP designation alongside each authorized course on student transcripts. Without that authorization, the indication of an Advanced Placement course is not permitted, and the AP Course Ledger, which is available to the colleges and universities annually, will not display the course as Advanced Placement. Each year, the designated administrator at the high school is responsible for completing an online form that indicates who is teaching which AP courses. Thus, if a different teacher will be teaching AP chemistry, an audit needs to be completed by the new teacher. If a teacher moves to a different institution, an audit needs to be completed. This second situation should be easily performed because a process exists for a teacher to transfer their previously approved course from one school to another. One strength of the entire process is that a school administrator is responsible for certifying Special Issue: Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry Published: July 16, 2014 1362

dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed500028k | J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 1362−1367

Journal of Chemical Education

Article

their students prior to publication and released prior to the implementation of the new curriculum. For those teachers looking at the laboratory manual, it provided a set of possible laboratories, but the set of topics may not represent a complete set of those laboratories that are desired for a particular school’s curriculum. With the launch of the redesigned course, a decision was made that all teachers with previously authorized courses would have to redo their course audit to reflect the new curriculum framework for the academic year 2013−2014, the first year for implementation of the redesigned course and exam. The first examination accompanying the redesigned curriculum will be administered in the spring of 2014.

the intent of the school to meet the curricular and resource requirements for each course.

■

AP CHEMISTRY REDESIGN The redesign of AP Chemistry began with criticism of the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs with the release of a National Research Council publication.1 The criticism of the AP science classes can be generalized as the curriculum was too broad and the exam had become too predictable. Recommendations included an examination of what the current state of the general chemistry course was at the colleges and universities, the production of a more detailed curriculum document describing the course of study, a focus on the laboratory, and the development of a set of skills that students will exhibit on completion of the course. The most immediate result of this report was the formation of a committee of secondary and college level educators to look at the curriculum. A second response was the study of the best practices associated with college education in chemistry.2 This study involved the collection of syllabi, assessment tools, and laboratory work for instruction in general chemistry from a large number (approximately 50) of institutions in an attempt to determine what common practices existed across institutions, what instructional techniques represented the current thinking of what is most effective for science instruction, and how to effectively evaluate those practices. A range of materials were reviewed by a separate group of tertiary level educators, who evaluated the materials on the basis of a rubric developed by a third party. One result of this work was a paradigm shift for the Advanced Placement courses, from being representative of a typical general chemistry course to being representative of what are thought to be the best general chemistry course by displaying elements of these courses in course content, in assessment, and in the laboratory environment. The new AP Chemistry Curriculum Framework3 was the second, and larger, of the two responses to this report. The curriculum framework was the result of lengthy discussion by many educators and has now been revised multiple times during the process. Essentially, the curriculum framework focuses upon six big ideas, describing six major topics to be covered. These six big ideas are broken down into greater detail as 26 enduring understanding or essential knowledge statements. The enduring understandings are then subdivided into 117 testable learning objectives, with explanations given for the reasoning behind each of the learning objectives. The document was also written with an understanding of the way that scientists work, the commonality of the science practices across disciplines.4,5 While specific pedagogical practices were not required, there is certainly an emphasis on the incorporation of active learning techniques in the classroom, and on guided inquiry in the laboratory environment. The committees did recognize that at least some of the laboratories needed to teach laboratory skills and techniques, so a recommendation was developed for the incorporation of some portions of traditional verification laboratories and for the incorporation of some guided inquiry laboratories. Recognizing that guided inquiry laboratories would be new to at least some teachers, the committee recommended the development of a set of guided inquiry laboratories that could be used in the advanced placement classroom. The resulting laboratory manual containing optional guided inquiry experiments has been published as both a student manual and a teacher version with sample results.6,7 These 16 experiments were field tested by a set of teachers and

■

THE CURRICULUM REQUIREMENTS AND HOW THEY HAVE CHANGED The AP Chemistry course audit requirements have changed since the original audit began in the 2007−2008 school year. The original course audit requirements focused on the content that teachers would be delivering in their classroom, rather than on examples of how students were engaging with the content and developing requisite skills. These expectations resulted in lists of chapters that would be covered and experiments that would be performed. There was no explicit textbook requirement, though there was an implicit requirement. With the new curriculum framework and its replacement of two pages on the content of the course by a structure of six big ideas and 117 learning objectives came expectations of an activity-based syllabus rather than a content-based one. Rather than requiring a complete set of lesson plans for the year; an entirely too lengthy document to possibly review, single examples of activities or assignments addressing each of the big ideas would be required. The framework’s emphasis on inquiry based activities also evidenced itself in a requirement for some guided inquiry laboratories. The College Board version of the requirements is given in Box 1. The first requirement is for a college level textbook that has been published in the last 10 years. The publication date of the textbook is required to be provided in the syllabus. The textbook is required to be one that is appropriate for the first year class for chemistry majors at the university level. Thus, textbooks that are appropriate for the standard first class in high school would not be appropriate for the AP course, just as a textbook for the general, organic, and biochemistry class (typically for nursing majors) would not be appropriate. In recognition of the rise of the use of electronic reading devices, such as iPads or Kindles, an electronic version of one of the paper textbooks is considered to be acceptable. There is a rarely used review process for the examination of materials that are not published as textbooks. The second requirement is that the syllabus demonstrates that the instructor is aware of the structure of the redesigned course. As such, simple reference to the six big ideas should suffice to meet this requirement. In a sense, this requirement replaces the former list of covered chapters. The third requirement has six subparts, one corresponding to each of the six big ideas. For each of the six big ideas, a nonlaboratory activity or assignment addressing one or more of the learning objectives from that big idea is required to be described. In an effort to describe this further, the activity or assignment must not involve a hands-on laboratory activity, meaning the activity or assignment is outside of the list of laboratory activities provided. In the sample syllabi,8 frequently 1363

dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed500028k | J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 1362−1367

Journal of Chemical Education

Article

activities in recognition of the creativity of teachers in the many different environments of schools. Possible activities might range from field trips to chemically related sites, to presentations to groups on important topics, to a detailed examination of the literature on a chemically related local environmental problem, to addressing chemical manufacture. In the original course audit, the laboratory requirement for each of the sciences had a different requirement for the time involved in the laboratory environment. AP Chemistry called for a double period in the laboratory every week. One of the criticisms of the initial audit was the lack of uniformity in the science laboratory requirements. AP Biology had 12 required laboratories, AP Chemistry had 22 recommended laboratories, AP Physics B had 12 required laboratories, and each of the AP Physics C courses required that 20% of the instructional time be spent in the laboratory. None of these is perfect, and in fact, each has its flaws, but the lack of standardization needed to be dealt with. In practice, this requirement could have also been met by performing 22 laboratory experiments. For the redesigned AP Chemistry course, this has been replaced by a requirement for 25% of the instructional time being spent in student hands-on laboratory activities. In somewhat dated information, a correlation between the time spent per week on laboratory and the AP exam grade was noted. This data showed that students with fewer than 30 min per week of laboratory scored lower on the exam, when there was not a laboratory question on the exam.11 This data resulted in a statement in the course description about laboratory time.12 The revised curricular requirements are for 16 laboratories to be performed in the 25% of the class time. The number of laboratories is reduced from the previously recommended 22 laboratories in light of the increased time requirement to perform the guided inquiry laboratories in the next requirement. The individual laboratories that any one teacher performs are still up to the individual teacher. At the same time as the curriculum was redesigned, a student6 and teacher7 version of a set of inquiry based laboratories was published by the College Board as a resource for teachers and students. However, these laboratories are not required, and the individual laboratories conducted in any one AP Chemistry course is still up to the individual teacher. AP Chemistry laboratories are required to be performed in a traditional, hands-on, “wet” laboratory manner and are meant to support the learning objectives of the course. The only exception to the requirement for wet laboratory is that a single laboratory exercise on modeling of the shapes of molecules is allowed. All of the rest of the laboratories should use traditional equipment for measurements on chemical compounds. Virtual laboratories are not considered as meeting this requirement by themselves but could be a part of an individual laboratory experience as a pre- or postlaboratory experience. The sixth requirement has two components; both of which must be met. The first of these components is for six of the hands-on laboratories to be performed in a guided inquiry manner. The second of the requirements is for the science practices to be given for each and every one of the laboratories. The six guided inquiry laboratories may, but are not required to, be taken from one of the inquiry based chemistry laboratory manuals that are commercially available. Should the instructor desire, the 16 laboratories in the College Board manual could be performed, although time could be an issue if all were performed in a guided inquiry fashion and all topics are not completely represented in this manual.

Box 1. The Advanced Placement Chemistry Curricular Requirements 1. Students and teachers use a recently published (within the last 10 years) college-level chemistry textbook. 2. The course is structured around the enduring understandings within the big ideas as described in the AP Chemistry Curriculum Framework. 3. Students are provided with opportunities to meet the learning objectives within each of the big ideas as described in the AP Chemistry Curriculum Framework. These opportunities must occur in addition to those within laboratory investigations. 4. The course provides students with the opportunity to connect their knowledge of chemistry and science to major societal or technological components (e.g., concerns, technological advances, innovations) to help them become scientifically literate citizens. 5. Students are provided the opportunity to engage in investigative laboratory work integrated throughout the course for a minimum of 25% of instructional time, which must include a minimum of 16 hands-on laboratory experiments while using basic laboratory equipment to support the learning objectives listed within the AP Chemistry Curriculum Framework. 6. The laboratory investigations used throughout the course allow students to apply the seven science practices defined in the AP Chemistry Curriculum Framework. At minimum, six of the required 16 laboratories are conducted in a guided-inquiry format. 7. The course provides opportunities for students to develop, record, and maintain evidence of their verbal, written, and graphic communication skills through laboratory reports, summaries of literature or scientific investigations, and oral, written, and graphic presentations. cited examples include POGIL exercises in book form9 or on the web,10 simulations, or well described homework problem assignments clearly tied to the curriculum framework’s learning objectives. Simply restating a problem set list or that old AP test questions are given is not viewed as meeting the requirement through being insufficiently tied to the new framework. In an ideal world, the syllabus would include examples of student performed activities to address each big idea. In our conversations with teachers, we see students making a set of straws with lengths corresponding to the ionization potential and developing the periodic table, making a set of balloons showing the different orientations of atoms around the central atoms to examine molecular shapes, viewing videos of reactions and classifying the different types of reactions, drawing different reaction coordinate diagrams and correlating the shapes of those diagrams to different reaction properties, observing exothermic and endothermic reactions as demonstrations and correlating the thermodynamic favorability of each reaction with the type of reaction and any temperature change, and a variety of ways of looking at simple systems (paper wads being tossed across a classroom) that reach equilibrium. The fourth requirement is to describe an activity, either laboratory or nonlaboratory, in which students connect their chemical knowledge to an application to society or technology. As originally envisioned, there would be a wide range of possible 1364

dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed500028k | J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 1362−1367

Journal of Chemical Education

Article

the teacher and the school administrator complete the online course audit form, which captures the formal commitment by the school and teacher to ensure that AP curricular and resource requirements will be met in the course, and the teachers submits the syllabus for review by college faculty through the online system. Teachers also have the option to adopt a previously approved syllabus: either one of the four sample syllabi or one that has been approved for another teacher. In both of these cases, the syllabus number is required. The latter option is frequently used when a common AP syllabus has been created for, perhaps, an entire school or school district that has multiple teachers leading the same AP course. When a previously approved syllabus is adopted, it is expected the adopted syllabus will be followed without modification. Following syllabus submission to the AP Course Audit Web site, a review of the syllabus commences. Multiple reviewers examine the syllabus to determine whether the curricular requirements are met. AP Course Audit Reviewers are experienced college instructors in academic subjects corresponding to the AP courses for which they review syllabi who undergo extensive and ongoing training to develop a deep expertise in syllabus review. If the syllabus meets all of the curricular requirements, then the school’s course is recorded in the AP course ledger. If the syllabus does not meet one or more curricular requirement, an email is sent to the teacher containing feedback specific to the requirements for which additional information is needed. The teacher is given an opportunity to revise the syllabus in order to provide the additional information requested in the initial review and then resubmits the updated syllabus online for a second review. If the information provided in the syllabus is still found to be insufficient after the second submission, teachers have the option to email or phone a chemistry specific curriculum advisor for further clarification and additional support to meet the remaining curricular requirements. A third submission would then occur, hopefully after modification of the syllabus to a form that could be approved. The third, and final, submission of the syllabus results in a third review and authorization/nonauthorization letter. In the event of nonauthorization, the syllabus and course would not be listed on the course ledger for that academic year and the earliest that student transcripts could list AP Chemistry would be following resubmission and authorization during the next academic year. AP course authorization does not affect the student’s ability to take, or receive, a score on the AP exam.

The second component of the sixth requirement is for the science practices associated with all laboratories to be listed. The requirement is evaluated as referring to the seven science practices in the curriculum framework as integers rather than as indicated by the numbers following the decimal point of the details of each science practice. For each laboratory, the corresponding science practices should be given. If the instructor chooses to perform 22 experiments, then the science practices should be given for each of the 22 experiments. An example reference, might be as follows: Laboratory name SP xxxxxx. The seven science practices were written to be in common across all of the science disciplines as the redesign process continues. The seventh requirement relates to communication of laboratory results. Again, there are two components to the requirement. The first relates to a description of the components of the laboratory report. A common way to meet this requirement would be to give the rubric that is used to grade the laboratory report, as consisting of purpose, procedure, data, data analysis, error analysis, and conclusion. Other instructors may choose to use different sections or more fully describe each of the sections. The second component is for a laboratory notebook or portfolio of reports. At one point in the development process, oral reports were considered but then rejected as being too time-consuming for teachers with a large number of students.

■

THE AUDIT PROCESS Figure 1 represents an attempt to describe how the audit process works from the teacher’s perspective. Basically, the

■

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS There are some misconceptions about the course audit, the process by which it occurs, and the reasons why the audit was implemented. The first misconception is the origin of the course audit. The idea for the course audit came from the assembly of College Board members, which includes both high school and college representatives. The membership was concerned about the misuse and abuse of the AP designation for courses that were simply not AP courses or did not meet college level expectations. Additionally, there was significant concern within the AP Program that without the ability to audit courses, teachers and their students would be at a significant disadvantage when necessary changes were made to the courses and exams by the AP Program but were not subsequently integrated effectively into AP classrooms due to lack of awareness or understanding by schools and teachers. A second misconception is that the development of the syllabus involves needless busy work that is not representative

Figure 1. AP chemistry course audit review process.

process begins with the teacher being assigned to teach the Advanced Placement class. The teacher then prepares a syllabus demonstrating how each of the curricular requirements described previously is met in the course. Note that this syllabus may differ from that handed out to students. In cases where individual instructors have the opportunity to attend an AP Professional Development workshop or summer institute, additional information on the process and support for syllabus development is provided. Once the syllabus is complete, both 1365

dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed500028k | J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 1362−1367

Journal of Chemical Education

Article

relative to the former list of more general topics. The supporting resources for course and syllabus development (the course planning and pacing guides and sample syllabi) provide strong examples of how to effectively structure the course within several different contexts. As such, the development of a syllabus, aligned with a much more detailed curriculum framework further supported by resources that demonstrate a variety of approaches to teaching the course, provides instructors with the guidance to effectively implement the AP Chemistry course with the flexibility to make it their own. A second advantage is that the instructors and administrators now must explicitly sign off that they are aware of, and meet, the resource requirements for teaching the course. Explicitly, a current college level textbook is required, an appropriate set of laboratory equipment is required, and sufficient laboratory time and experiences are required. Ideally, sufficient teacher preparation time should be provided along with the resources needed to teach the class. The current course audit process does have its limitations. Several arguments have appeared about whether a syllabus review is useful and reflects the reality of the classroom. First, the process is, in part, based on the assumption that the syllabus actually represents what is happening in the classroom. We believe that this assumption is based upon the professionalism of AP teachers and their administrators. The implementation of a system such that each instructor would be observed every day in the classroom would simply be untenable. A second limitation concerns the laboratory requirements through the class, the examination, and the audit’s curricular requirements. It is not the purpose of this article to examine the importance of the laboratory experience to chemistry instruction or the practicality of large scale laboratory assessment programs, but to examine how to examine the extent to which laboratory experiences are performed in the AP Chemistry class. Again, we choose to assume that the syllabus represents the classroom behavior.

of what is actually occurring in the classroom. We would simply note that in today’s world of continuing assessment and of the increasing demands on educators to show measurable outcomes of their classroom instruction, the modification of an existing syllabus to a minimal document addressing what occurs in the classroom might help structure the planning for the year in a way advantageous to both the teacher and student. We note that the syllabus is NOT a set of detailed lesson plans for the year, NOR is it the totality of assessment methods for the year. The audit syllabus does require reference to the curriculum framework in the syllabus, but it does NOT require a detailed listing of all the learning objectives or curriculum requirements. In fact, a complete copy of the 87 page curriculum framework in the syllabus would constitute a complete waste of time on the part of the teacher preparing the syllabus and on the part of the reviewers who would then have to read the excessive verbiage only tangentially related to the curriculum requirements and the evidence for those requirements being met in the classroom. A strong syllabus provides evidence that the content of the course expressed in the curriculum framework is taught using student-centered learning activities by providing example activities corresponding to each of the big ideas. Even here, the activities do not need extensive description. Another common area of misinterpretation is that the course audit requires (insert your choice of content/material/ textbook/classroom organization/laboratories). All of the above are false impressions. The course audit requires a college level textbook, of which many examples are given in the example textbook list for the course. The course audit syllabus requires that the big ideas of chemistry be addressed but does not require a specific order of presentation or type of presentation. The four sample syllabi were deliberately chosen to illustrate different textbooks and different orders of presentation to show the breadth of different approaches possible with an approved syllabus. In addition, the course planning and pacing guides also illustrate additional approaches to the order of class material and how it is taught. Although the course audit is a review for required elements of the course, there is nothing in any of the audit related documents that suggests that an instructor cannot teach (insert your favorite topic here); the topics that are not a part of the learning objectives will simply not be assessed as part of the AP exam. While the course audit requirements include a requirement for 16 laboratories, it does not mandate the 16 laboratories contained in the College Board’s laboratory manual or that more laboratories cannot be performed. We have often heard that performing all the 16 laboratories in the laboratory manual in a guided inquiry fashion would be a lot of time in laboratory, possibly resulting in insufficient time for teaching the required material. The audit syllabus must include six identified guided inquiry laboratories, which can come from a variety of sources including the College Board laboratory manual, any of a number of commercial sources, or teacher-generated materials. In addition, the science practices associated with each of the performed laboratories must be provided. The learning objectives (topics) for each laboratory are not required.

■

EVALUATION OF TEACHER CONCERNS As we consider each of the curricular requirements, instructors are bound to look at the sample syllabi and wonder why they are structured in this particular manner. Previous syllabi have been structured around the material that was taught, while the current AP Chemistry sample syllabi are structured around presentation of student oriented activities addressing fewer topics. In essence, each AP Chemistry teacher’s syllabus should present evidence of activities that increase student learning rather than evidence of material that is presented to the students or that students are trained to answer specific questions on the exam through the endless application of worksheets and problem sets. Ideally, the sample syllabi should provide examples of these student oriented activities, which are activities believed to be done in most classrooms. The requirement for an activity connecting the application of chemistry to society or technology was intentionally written broadly in recognition of the range of application of chemistry around the world, the range of interests of the AP chemistry instructors, and the variety of environments in which AP chemistry is taught. Activities from environmental studies of the concentration of various species and presentations about local industries applying chemistry to science fair projects applying chemistry to a problem are all anticipated to meet this requirement.

■

ADVANTAGES TO HAVING A COURSE AUDIT PROCESS The implementation of the course audit, particularly in combination with the new curriculum framework, has several distinct advantages. For a new teacher, the detail provided in the curriculum framework provides explicit content that can be tested 1366

dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed500028k | J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 1362−1367

Journal of Chemical Education

Article

(7) College Board. AP Chemistry Guided Inquiry Experiments: Applying the Science Practices Teacher Manual; College Board: New York, NY, 2013. (8) Course Audit - Chemistry Teacher Page. http://www. collegeboard.com/html/apcourseaudit/courses/chemistry.html (accessed December 31, 2013). (9) Trout, L. POGIL Activities for High School Chemistry, Book & CD; Flinn Scientific: Bativia, IL, 2012. (10) Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning. www.pogil.org. (accessed December 31, 2013). (11) Bond, W. Data on Student Exam Performance versus Lab Time. Personal Communication, 2002. (12) College Board. Advanced Placement Chemistry Course Description; College Board: New York, 2008; p 34.

Considerable confusion has arisen with the change from a larger number of recommended laboratories to 16 laboratories, with six of those being guided inquiry. The reduction in number is a direct result of the increased time required to perform a well designed guided inquiry laboratory. That not all of the laboratories are required to be guided inquiry is a direct result of the need for laboratories to teach techniques, such as an initial laboratory on performing titrations. A second part of the confusion arises from the requirement for guided inquiry laboratories. Hopefully, this is addressed in another manuscript in this issue. But it suffices to say that the requirement is for guided inquiry rather than open inquiry.5 Guided inquiry provides important skills for students along the progression to becoming scientists or as part of an educated citizenry as the important components of explanation of results and alternative explanations and understanding of the chemical concepts and their application to other experiments, theories, or problems. In essence, the curriculum requirements are written as they are in an attempt to give the instructor maximum leeway in deciding the specifics of teaching presentation and content while attempting to ensure that there are unified themes and general requirements that are included in all AP courses.

■

DATA ON CURRENT SUBMISSIONS For the academic year 2013−2014, submission of syllabi commenced March 1, 2013, and will continue until January 31, 2014. Through January 31, 2014, 7708 course syllabi have begun the review process outlined in Figure 1. Approximately 35% of teachers have adopted one of the four sample syllabi.

■

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Author

*E-mail: [email protected]. Notes

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

■

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

■

REFERENCES

We would like to thank the many members of the staff at the College Board and the Educational Policy Improvement Center for their thoughtful criticism of earlier drafts of this manuscript.

(1) Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools; Gollub, J. P., Bertenthal, M. W., Labov, J. B., Curtis, P. C., Eds.; National Academy Press: Washington, DC, 2002. (2) Conley, D. T.; Aspengren, K.; Stout, O.; Veach, D. College Board Advanced Placement Best Practices Course Study: Chemistry; Educational Policy Improvement Center: Eugene, OR, 2007. (3) AP Chemistry Course and Exam Description. http://media. collegeboard.com/digita lServices/pdf/ ap/IN120085263_ ChemistryCED_Effective_Fall_2013_lkd.pdf (accessed December 31, 2013). (4) Singer, S. R.; Hilton, M. L.; Schweingruber, H. A. America’s Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science; National Academy of Science: Washington, DC, 2005; p 254. (5) National Research Council. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning; National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 2000. (6) College Board. AP Chemistry Guided Inquiry Experiments: Applying the Science Practices Student Manual; College Board: New York, NY, 2013. 1367

dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed500028k | J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91, 1362−1367