Relative success in college chemistry for students who experienced a high‐school course in chemistry and those who had not

Abstract

A total of 53 high‐ability students who had completed the eleventh year in high school enrolled in a standard college chemistry course at the University of Iowa. Half of them had completed a high‐school course in chemistry and half had not. After 2 months of instruction during a summer session, there was no difference between groups as to attitude toward chemistry, performance on the ACS‐NSTA Chemistry Achievement Examination, final examination for the course, and course grade. There was a great difference in the amount of time required of tutors; the students who had not completed high‐school chemistry spent more time in studying and with tutors.

High School Chemistry Content Background of Introductory College Chemistry Students and Its Association with College Chemistry Grades

“…6 The predicted grade of students who reported a heavy emphasis on stoichiometry was 2.6 points higher than their peers who reported studying stoichiometry for A Few Weeks or A Month. However, compared to students who reported no stoichiometry, the heavy emphasis students were predicted to earn grades 5.1 points higher.…”

Success in introductory college physics: The role of high school preparation

“…Krajcik (Krajcik & Yager, 1987;Yager et al, 1988) found that previous coursework in chemistry had no impact on student grades in a summer school AP chemistry course, but the amount of tutoring help sought was four times higher for students without a prior chemistry course. This implies that taking high school science may serve to reduce the time and effort needed to perform at a satisfactory level in college courses.…”

Perceptions of coordinators of college freshman chemistry regarding selected goals and outcomes of high school chemistry

“…They indicated that although high school chemistry should prepare students for college, it must not be a small-scale version of college chemistry, a concern that has been raised in the past (Harms & Yager, 1981;Krajcik & Yager, 1987;Yager et al, 1988). Instead, they expected more attention to be paid to the descriptive aspects of chemistry and that high school teachers would make chemistry more fun, not scary, a finding previously reported by Zimelis (1981).…”

“…Recently it has been documented that high school science teachers base what they teach on what college instructors of freshmen students expect (Gabel, 1983;Yager, Snider, & Krajcik, 1988). This is disturbing, because not all students proceed to college, and also because "there are many myths about what colleges expect" and about "what experiences in high school make a difference in college" (Yager, 1986, p. 24).…”

“…It also provided an opportunity for college instructors to reflect upon and to show their perceptions of learning outcomes being proposed by science educators for precollege science. Although Yager et al (1988) inferred emphases of high school chemistry from observing student performance and reactions when exposed to a curriculum with a societal bias, the present study sought more direct evidence of what college chemistry professors expected by surveying their perceptions on a broader range of outcomes of high school science.…”