Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2015
Volume 60, Number 4
Saturday–Tuesday, April 11–14, 2015; Baltimore, Maryland
Session X11: Invited Session: AAPT: What You Need to Know About New AP Physics 1 and 2 |
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Sponsoring Units: FEd Chair: Gerald Feldman, George Washington University Room: Key 7 |
Tuesday, April 14, 2015 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
X11.00001: AP Physics 1 {\&} 2; Some Things Old and Some Things New Invited Speaker: Robert Morse In fall September 2014, AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2 replaced the AP Physics B curriculum, with the first exams in the new courses coming up in May 2015. In this talk I will give an overview of the history and rationale for the changes, describe the process of developing the new Curriculum Framework, discuss changes in emphasis compared to AP Physics B, including the emphasis on laboratory work. ~Finally, I will give examples of the difference in the style of the questions to be used in the new AP exams. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, April 14, 2015 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
X11.00002: The new AP Physics exams: Integrating qualitative and quantitative reasoning Invited Speaker: Andrew Elby When physics instructors and education researchers emphasize the importance of integrating qualitative and quantitative reasoning in problem solving, they usually mean using those types of reasoning serially and separately: first students should analyze the physical situation qualitatively/conceptually to figure out the relevant equations, then they should process those equations quantitatively to generate a solution, and finally they should use qualitative reasoning to check that answer for plausibility (Heller, Keith, {\&} Anderson, 1992). The new AP Physics 1 and 2 exams will, of course, reward this approach to problem solving. But one kind of free response question will demand and reward a further integration of qualitative and quantitative reasoning, namely mathematical modeling and sense-making--- inventing new equations to capture a physical situation and focusing on proportionalities, inverse proportionalities, and other functional relations to infer what the equation ``says'' about the physical world. In this talk, I discuss examples of these \textit{qualitative-quantitative translation} questions, highlighting how they differ from both standard quantitative and standard qualitative questions. I then discuss the kinds of modeling activities that can help AP and college students develop these skills and habits of mind. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, April 14, 2015 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
X11.00003: Bringing together best practices and best acceptance with real resources: AP Physics 1 and 2 Invited Speaker: Gay Stewart The road to the new AP Physics 1 and 2 courses has been long, but the journey has been worthwhile. The courses are constructed to be a careful balance of best practices in physics education and what can be sustained with the resources available to provide the best experience in learning physics to the most students. Experts in content and learning science worked together through several layers of committees to develop a model that was then refined through focus group processes with state-level curriculum experts who had to see how to fit the courses into their students' schedules, high school faculty who had to deliver the courses within their resources, and higher education faculty who had to make decisions on acceptance. The best practices course was amazingly robust to the considerations of each of these audiences. In this interactive talk, I will outline the process and answer questions. [Preview Abstract] |
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