Comparing high school physics standards: What is included and what is not.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to determine if high school physics content standards were consistent throughout the United States. The high school physics standards for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia were compared to determine what standards were being addressed by each of the states. Different areas within physics; force and motion, energy and momentum, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics, waves and optics, and quantum and nuclear physics, were also compared to determine the predominance of standards within each of these content areas of physics.;The results of this study indicated that there were significant differences in the number of physics standards addressed by the states depending on whether they arranged their documents thematically (physical science) or by traditional core content (physics). Physics states tended to have more standards than physical science states but there are outliers within both groups. Surprisingly, there was a pattern, geographically, in terms of how states arranged their documents.