In Advanced Placement Redesign Bruner tops Skinner

Rethinking Advanced Placement
Christopher Drew

New York Times
January 7, 2011

Topic: Advanced Placement test get a redesign, out goes memorization, in comes discovery and critical thinking.

Key Points: Beginning in 2012, the College Board will present redesigned AP tests which will focus on critical thinking skills. Previously, students were responsible for learning the entire AP textbook which amounted to memorization of large amounts of facts with no time for context or lab work (history & biology being the worst offenders).

"We really believe that the New A.P. needs to be anchored in a curriculum that focuses on what students need to be able to do with their knowledge,” Trevor Packer, VP of the AP, says. The new approach is important because critical thinking skills are considered essential for advanced college courses and jobs in today’s information-based economy. College administrators and veteran A.P. teachers familiar with the new biology curriculum believe the changes could have significant reverberations for how science is taught in introductory college classes and even elementary school classrooms, and might bring some of the excitement back to science learning.

A committee of the National Research Council, called attention to the A.P. problems in 2002. It criticized A.P. science courses for cramming in too much material and failing to let students design their own lab experiments. It also said the courses had failed to keep pace with research on how people learn: instead of listening to lectures, “more real learning takes place if students spend more time going into greater depth on fewer topics, allowing them to experience problem solving, controversies and the subtleties of scholarly investigation.”


Relevance: The article shows how the A.P. courses are adapting to what colleges say they want to reflect in their A.P. students. That is, they want them to think critically like college students before granting the "Placement" part of the A.P. It also reinforces what we are discussing in Ed Psych, where colleges expect a completely different type of learning style than high schools.