| The advanced placement physics B program provides students the opportunity to take introductory college level coursework while still in high school. Ideally this program would serve as a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline, both preparing students for and fostering a desire to pursue further studies in physics at the university. However, in order for the program to be effective there needs to be a match between the reasoning abilities of the students and the cognitive demands of the curriculum. Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory provides a framework for understanding the reasoning abilities of students. This study examines the relationship between reasoning ability and success on the AP Physics B Exam. To determine cognitive developmental level students in the study were administered Tobin and Capie's Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT). Scores on the total TOLT and individual sub-test scores on the TOLT were correlated with scores on the 2005 AP Physics B Exam using the non-parametric Kendall's Tau-b Test. The results indicate both a significant correlation between total TOLT score and AP Physics B score (r = 0.48, p = 0.00) and a significant correlation between individual subtest scores and AP Physics B score (r = 0.22-0.41, p = 0.00). The results suggest that to be successful in AP Physics B students need to be capable of formal operational reasoning. |
