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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: 4, Insightful) by jdavidb on Thursday August 09 2018, @09:36PM (1 child)
This sounds to me like an excuse to not master the prerequisites and not take Calculus. Look, if you don't want to take Calculus, don't take it. And definitely don't take it if you haven't mastered the prerequisites - doesn't that go without saying? You absolutely cannot progress in math if you don't master one topic before proceeding on to the next ones. Any good math teacher should tell you this.
I am my childrens' math teacher, and we're going to shoot for Calculus for all of them. For now we're working on the basics.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @11:08PM
It should go without saying, but it doesn't. Most of those students are taking it in high school either because it looks good on their transcript or in the mistaken belief that they'll be able to skip the course in college. Neither of which are particularly true and schools should stop suggesting they're true.
Unfortunately, whole generations of school children have been raised to consider the grade to be the important thing rather than a signifier of learning. And unfortunately, that's also how the grading schemes have tended to be as well. To make matters worse a lot of people treat this stuff like something they'll never use, so don't bother to take it seriously and wind up in over their head as the things they didn't master, but should have, start to crop up.
There's a reason why math courses are commonly used to weed out weaker students.