SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Contrary to widely-held opinion, taking high school calculus isn't necessary for success later in college calculus—what's more important is mastering the prerequisites, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry—that lead to calculus. That's according to a study of more than 6,000 college freshmen at 133 colleges carried out by the Science Education Department of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, led by Sadler, the Frances W. Wright Senior Lecturer on Astronomy, and by Sonnert, a Research Associate.In addition, the survey finds that weaker math students who choose to take calculus in high school actually get the most benefit from the class. The study is described in a May 2018 paper published in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education.
"We study the transition from high school to college, and on one side of that there are college professors who say calculus is really a college subject, but on the other side there are high school teachers who say calculus is really helpful for their students, and the ones who want to be scientists and engineers get a lot out of it," Sadler said. "We wanted to see if we could settle that argument—which is more important, the math that prepares you for calculus or a first run-through when you're in high school followed by a more serious course in college?"
The study's results, Sadler said, provided a clear answer -a firmer grip on the subjects that led up to calculus had twice the impact of taking the subject in high school. And of those who did take calculus in high school, it was the weakest students who got the most from the class.
To get those findings, Sadler and Sonnert, designed a study that asked thousands of college freshmen to report not only demographic information, but their educational history, background and mathematics training.
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-mastering-prerequisitesnot-calculus-high-schoolbetter.html
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 10 2018, @05:04AM
Also, I'd encourage everyone to take a look at the authors' figure 3 on page 58 of the PDF I linked in my previous post, and see if you can figure out how that's supposed to square with their conclusions. Basically, at every level of prior math performance, students who enrolled in high school calc did better in college calc than those who didn't. The gains are not particularly large, but the trend is consistent. (The only exception appears to be the very lowest performing in prior math, but the error bar is huge there, I assume because there aren't enough students in that category to draw clear conclusions.)
The caption to figure 3 also notes that those who enrolled in high school calc in the first place tended to have better performance in prior high school math. (Duh.)
Based on that graph (assuming I'm reading it right), a more reasonable study summary might say the following:
(1) Students who had better performance in pre-calculus high school math tend to enroll in high-school calculus at higher rates.
(2) No matter what their level of pre-calculus knowledge, those who take high-school calc almost always tend to perform better in college calc. (Though the gains are not always substantial.)
(3) Almost all students who performed highly (i.e., got an A grade) in college calc had previously taken high-school calc. (See right side of the graph.) Even students who had an exceptional pre-calculus ability seem very unlikely to score an A in college calc unless they took it in high school, demonstrating that true mastery of the subject likely requires both exceptional prior knowledge AND repeated exposure to concepts.
(4) Also, in general, those who do better in math often continue to do better in math. (Duh.)
THE END.
[Unfortunately, that sort of narrative doesn't really work well with the whole weird "high school teachers are wrong and college profs are right" framing argument.]