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Study Finds That Students Benefit From Depth, Rather Than Breadth
A recent study reports that high school students who study fewer science topics, but study them in greater depth, have an advantage in college science classes over their peers who study more topics and spend less time on each.
Robert Tai, associate professor at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, worked with Marc S. Schwartz of the University of Texas at Arlington and Philip M. Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to conduct the study and produce the report.
"Depth Versus Breadth: How Content Coverage in High School Courses Relates to Later Success in College Science Coursework" relates the amount of content covered on a particular topic in high school classes with students' performance in college-level science classes. The study will appear in the July 2009 print edition of Science Education and is currently available as an online pre-print from the journal.
"As a former high school teacher, I always worried about whether it was better to teach less in greater depth or more with no real depth. This study offers evidence that teaching fewer topics in greater depth is a better way to prepare students for success in college science," Tai said. "These results are based on the performance of thousands of college science students from across the United States."
https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-finds-students-benefit-depth-rather-breadth-high-school-science-courses