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T
he Physics First movementteaching a true a similar evolution: modern chemistry emphasizes
physics course to ninth-grade studentsis atomic structure, atomic energy levels, and even some
gaining popularity in high schools. There are quantum theory. Physics First advocates argue that
several different rhetorical arguments for and against a good understanding of modern biology requires a
this movement, and it is quite controversial in phys- chemistry background, and a good understanding of
ics education. However, there is no actual evidence to modern chemistry requires a physics background.
assess the success, or failure, of this substantial shift Beyond these changes that have occurred in the
in the science teaching sequence. We have under- content of high school science courses, advocates for
taken a comparison study of physics classes taught in Physics First cite other potential advantages to teach-
ninth- and 12th-grade classes in Maine. Comparisons ing physics to ninth-graders rather than 12th-graders:3
of student understanding and gains with respect to
mechanics concepts were made with excerpts from 1. Improved learning of algebra due to concurrent ap-
well-known multiple-choice surveys and individual plications of the algebra to physics.
student interviews. Results indicate that both popu- 2. Increased enrollment in physics courses. Currently
lations begin physics courses with similar content only about 35% of high school students take phys-
knowledge and specific difficulties, but when learn- ics, and approximately 25% of high school stu-
ing concepts, ninth-graders are more sensitive to the dents take both chemistry and physics.
instructional method used. 3. The ability for students to take advanced or elec-
tive science courses during 12th grade without hav-
Background ing to take two science courses simultaneously.
Advocates of the Physics First movement1-3 argue 4. A better foundation of science content and skills
that the current sequence of high school science cours- (forces, motion, energy, experimental design, and
es (biology-chemistry-physics) should be flipped in data analysis) than Earth science.
response to the dramatic changes in science curricula 5. Improved integration of topics between biology,
during the 20th century.2 Because of the important chemistry, and physics due to the increasing con-
discoveries in biology that have been made since Wat- ceptual grain size of the topics.
son and Cricks discovery of the structure of DNA in
1953, modern biology courses emphasize molecular Previous Research into the
methods, genetics, and biochemistry; this is very dif- Effectiveness of Physics First
ferent from the general biology classes of the early
20th century that were a composite of botany, physiol- While these arguments presented by Physics First
ogy, and zoology. Chemistry courses have undergone advocates may seem logical, there is a scarcity of em-
234 DOI: 10.1119/1.3098211 The Physics Teacher Vol. 47, April 2009
pirical data that could help determine the extent to On a much larger scale, Sadler and Tai13 conducted
which a Physics First program actually benefits stu- a study of the effect of high school science and mathe-
dents. Many educators have reported success in teach- matics on grades in college introductory science cours-
ing physics first, but these reports have been mostly es, with ~8500 students at 63 colleges and universities.
anecdotal and lacking quantitative data. There have Their results indicate that high school science courses
been small-scale studies of the effectiveness of teach- are not associated with better performance in intro-
ing physics to underclassmen (ninth- and 10th-grad- ductory college science courses out-of-discipline; for
ers) that have been published since the Physics First example, taking high school physics is associated with
movements infancy in the late 1960s.4-8 However, higher introductory college physics grades but not
the teaching situations in most of these studies do not with grades in introductory college chemistry or biol-
reflect the classroom situation for the vision of Physics ogy. They also find that the number of years of high
First, namely classes for all ninth-grade students. Thus, school math taken correlates with higher college sci-
we feel that these studies lack the necessary generaliz- ence grades across the board. They suggest that these
ability to be valid evidence of effectiveness. results can be extrapolated to the argument that taking
Dreon9 described the state of Physics First curricula physics in ninth grade will improve chemistry learn-
in 13 public and private Pennsylvania high schools. ing in 10th grade and similarly for 11th-grade biology.
Dreons study contains no discussion of student learn- They state that their result casts doubt on the impact
ing in these courses. However, he states that an over- of changing the traditional high school science se-
view of content and context for these courses allows quence to physics first. However, the transition from
us to move one step closer to answering what [he] high school to college courses is very different from the
believe[s] to be one of the most important questions ninth- to 10th-grade transition, so its not clear how
facing the Physics First movement: Can ninth-grade directly these results can be applied to the Physics First
students successfully learn physics? situation.
Korsunsky and Agar10 recently reported results of Our study directly investigates ninth-grade physics
a survey on student attitudes and expectations among students and documents the content understanding
eighth-graders. They document widely varying results and gains in ninth-grade physics classes and the at-
and distorted expectations about the ninth-grade titudes and expectations of students in these classes,
physics course they would be taking the following year using well-researched survey questions with known
and gender differences in student perceptions of phys- outcomes for different instructional methods.
ics. They note that there are virtually no reports of
actual research studies relevant to Physics First. Our Study
Most recently, Goodman and Etkina11 reported the We have chosen to compare the experiences of
results of teaching a mathematically rigorous ninth- ninth-graders taking physics and 12th-graders taking
grade physics course using algebra but not trigonom- physics for the first time. The research question we
etry, whose content is derived from the AP Physics B address in this paper is whether there is a difference in
curriculum. The course was implemented with great the performance of ninth-graders and 12th-graders on
success, as measured by an increase in the number of a survey of kinematics and mechanics concepts.
students taking and passing the AP exams and a com- The intended study population is typical high
parison of AP B performance with the 1998 TIMMS school students in the state of Maine. Seven high
scores. The extent to which the AP exam serves as a schools in Maine participated in this study, provid-
valid measure of conceptual understanding is debat- ing a total of 321 students. Three of the schools teach
able; nevertheless, this result serves as a pragmatic physics to ninth-graders and three teach physics to
indicator of student success with a widely recognized 12th-graders. One of the participating schools teaches
assessment instrument (the AP exam). The success of physics to ninth-graders and also has a course for 12th-
this mathematically rigorous method of instruction in graders who did not take physics in an earlier grade.
the Rutgers study is consistent with work in introduc- The participating schools are schools that responded
tory college courses integrating calculus and physics.12 to a request sent out on the Maine Science Listserv and
This report presents data from part of a larger study except for those of the non-honors-level ninth-graders
that included surveys of attitudes and expectations as that did not receive modeling-based instruction. For
well. We will include that data and its implications in a this subgroup only, the post-test scores are not signifi-
future publication. cantly different from the pre-test scores.
The use of modeling instruction14 appeared to have
Results and Discussion a large effect on the non-honors-level ninth-grade stu-
On the pre-test, both the ninth- and 12th-graders dents performance on the post-test and their normal-
did only slightly better than random guessing: while ized gains. These results are not inconsistent with data
random guessing would result in answering 4.4 ques- that have been collected on the efficacy of modeling
tions out of 27 correctly (16%), the ninth-graders in previous studies. Hake,21 Wells et al.,14 and Heste-
answered 5.3 questions correctly (20%), and the 12th- nes22 found that the normalized gains of studentson
graders answered 6.0 questions correctly (22%) (Table the full FCIin courses that employ modeling are
I). (We note that the pre-test results for the different approximately twice as large (40-60%) as those of stu-
subpopulations in ninth grade were sufficiently similar dents in traditionally taught courses (20-35%). This
to warrant a single value for all ninth-grade students.) was generally true for both honors and non-honors-
This indicates that students from both grade levels had level students. However, in our study, there was not
very little conceptual understanding of mechanics at a significant difference in the normalized gains of the
the beginning of their physics courses. These pre-test two honors groups (modeling versus traditional.) The
scores are similar to those of 12th-graders on the com- honors groups outperformed the non-honors groups,
plete versions of the FCI and FMCE.18,19 regardless of the type of instruction.
We used normalized gain [<g> = (post-test score An interesting side note about the use of model-
pre-test score) / (perfect score pre-test score)] as ing-based instruction is that the use of this method
a means of measuring conceptual learning since it is demands more instructional time. The effect on the
commonly used as a figure of merit for instruction normalized gains of the number of weeks spent on me-
measured by the FCI and the FMCE. On the post- chanics instruction was found to be not significant us-
test, results between subgroups differed, often substan- ing ANOVA. This indicates that the interactive meth-
tially. The results for each subgroup are displayed in od of instruction, and not the amount of traditional
Table II. The honors-level ninth-graders had the high- instruction, is the more important variable in student
est post-test scores and normalized gains of any of the learning. This is consistent with previous research at
subgroups, even above that of the 12th-grade classes. many levels.22
The non-honors-level ninth-graders had the lowest
post-test scores and normalized gains of any of the Implications and Limitations
subgroups. All of the normalized gains are significant The similarity of the pre-test results between the