Wood William B
Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
Cell Biol Educ. 2002 Winter;1(4):123-7. doi: 10.1187/cbe.02-09-0038.
A recently released National Research Council (NRC) report, Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools, evaluated and recommended changes in the Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), and other advanced secondary school science programs. As part of this study, discipline-specific panels were formed to evaluate advanced programs in biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Among the conclusions of the Content Panel for Biology were that AP courses in particular suffer from inadequate quality control as well as excessive pressure to fulfill their advanced placement function, which encourages teachers to attempt coverage of all areas of biology and emphasize memorization of facts rather than in-depth understanding. In this essay, the Panel's principal findings are discussed, with an emphasis on its recommendation that colleges and universities should be strongly discouraged from using performance on either the AP examination or the IB examination as the sole basis for automatic placement out of required introductory courses for biology majors and distribution requirements for nonmajors.
美国国家研究委员会（NRC）最近发布的一份报告《学习与理解：改进美国高中数学和科学的进阶学习》，对美国大学预修课程（AP）、国际文凭课程（IB）以及其他高中进阶科学课程进行了评估并提出了改进建议。作为这项研究的一部分，成立了各学科专门小组来评估生物学、化学、物理学和数学方面的进阶课程。生物学内容小组的结论之一是，AP课程尤其存在质量控制不足以及为履行其大学预修功能而承受过大压力的问题，这促使教师试图涵盖生物学的所有领域，并强调对事实的记忆而非深入理解。在本文中，将讨论该小组的主要发现，重点是其建议：应强烈劝阻高校将AP考试或IB考试的成绩作为生物学专业学生免修必修入门课程以及非专业学生满足分布要求的唯一自动依据。
