ReferencesPHY690 Craig UhrichDr. MacIsaac 3/28/05Two years ago, my school district decided to offer Advanced Placement Physics C: Mechanics (APC Mechanics), a calculus-based course in Newtonian mechanics, in lieu of its Advanced Placement Physics B course, an algebra-based survey physics course. This left me with the daunting task of choosing a textbook that would suit my students the best. The students that would be enrolling in the class were “accelerated” high-school juniors or slightly better than average seniors who had already taken a high school level algebra-based survey course in physics. Along with physics these students were either concurrently enrolled in pre-calculus or calculus, so their knowledge of calculus, at least at the beginning of the course, was minimal. Considering the pool of physics students I had, I was in the search for a college-level physics text that covered all of the objectives of the APC curriculum, but was written at a level that advanced juniors could read. Ideally, this text would contain the calculus needed for the course, but didn’t rely on it to introduce physics concepts. After reading a survey of what textbooks other AP Physics instructors were using, I reviewed a few of the most popular. These texts reminded me of what my undergraduate physics texts were like, i.e., nearly impossible to read. They relied heavily on mathematics to introduce many concepts. About the same time, I was taking a graduate level physics course for educators that used Randy Knight’s Physics: A Contemporary Perspective (Knight, 1996) as the text. This was the preliminary edition to what is now entitled Physics For Scientists and Engineers: A Strategic Approach (Knight, 2004). I found that this text approached physics from more of a conceptual viewpoint. After examining a sample of the new edition, I decided to use this text to develop my curriculum around. The text was written using physics education research as a focus so it is designed to teach physics using ideas and techniques that have been shown to improve physics comprehension. After inspecting the book, it seemed more readable compared to other typical calculus-based texts meant for introductory physics courses. In addition, this textbook was accompanied by a workbook that was intended to “bridge the gap between the textbook and homework problems by providing students the opportunity to learn a practice skills prior to using those skills in quantitativeend-of-chapter problems” (Knight, 2004). Since the time I chose this text, I have set out to align this textbook with the APC: Mechanics course objectives. The remainder of this paper will focus on just how well this text suits an AP physics course taught to upper-level high school students and will include how I use the text in my teaching, student’s reactions to the text, the text’s strengths and weaknesses, and a table that indicates where each APC: Mechanics course objective is found in both Knight’s textbook and workbook.Using Knight’s textbook and workbook:Being relatively new to the field of physics teaching, I am constantly looking at ways to improve my teaching and the structure of my courses to make learning physics easier and more enjoyable. One aspect of my teaching that has always bothered me is theway I incorporate the textbook. I have always felt that I have never used a textbook in aneffective way. In most of my courses, the textbook was used for nothing more than a source of problems to assign my students for homework. I found comfort in knowing that if my students had an additional resource to go to for physics knowledge if theywanted to see a concept presented in a way that was different from my classroom teaching. The few students who did this often told me they had difficulties in understanding their textbook. A committee that has reviewed different physics textbooks and their use (1999) points out that I am just like many other physics teachers when it comes to this matter. I decided that I was going to use Knight’s text and workbook as an integral part ofthe course. Knight suggests that students should read the text before coming to class to learn new material (2004). The goal of this reading is to get a very basic understanding of new vocabulary, definitions, and notations. He then recommends having students reread the text after the material has been presented. During this reading, students shouldpay more attention to detail. They should focus on the logic behind each example given in the chapter.This leads me to explaining how I have been using Knight’s resources. At the beginning of the year I encouraged students to read the textbook both before and after new material was presented. For a while, I did not hold the students accountable for these reading “assignments” and, consequently, I found that many of them did not read their text. I then decided, as suggested by Eric Mazur (1997), to give a short reading quiz. After a few of these, students soon realized that they needed to, at least, look at the assigned section quickly enough to know what the day’s topic was before coming to class. As a result, I found that I was able to pick up the pace in class. I didn’t have to spend as much time introducing concepts or terminology as I had to when my students were not reading their texts. Another instructional technique I have heard of and plan to use in the future to encourage my students to read their texts is to have them, as an assignment, write down some notes about the reading assignments, possibly defining any new terms or ideas. After new material has been presented in class, I usually assign the workbook section that correlates to the reading section for homework. Often, the students begin working on these in groups of two or three if there is time left at the end ofclass. The following day we usually go over these assignments. Many times I will have the students put their solutions to particular problems on whiteboards and have them give explanations to their peers. After using the workbook assignments to help the students develop a conceptual understanding of the new material we look at quantitative examples, which are then followed by typical “end-of-chapter” questions assigned for homework. Another variation in using the workbook that I have tried, as suggested by Roger Freedman (I’m not sure how to cite this), is to have the
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