The AP Biology course is designed to be the equivalent of a college introductory biology course usually taken by biology majors during their first year. After showing themselves to be qualified on the AP Examination, some students as college freshmen, are permitted to undertake upper-level courses in biology or to register for courses for which biology is a prerequisite. Other students may have fulfilled a basic requirement for a laboratory science course and will be able to undertake other courses to pursue their majors.
AP Biology should include those topics regularly covered in a college biology course for majors or in the syllabus from a high-quality college program in introductory biology. The college course in biology differs significantly from the usual first high school in biology with respect to the kind of textbook used, the range and depth of topics covered, the kind of laboratory work done by students, and the time and effort required of students. The textbooks used for AP Biology should be those also used by college biology majors. The kinds of labs done by AP students must be the equivalent of those done by college students.
The AP Biology course is designed to be taken by students after the successful completion of a first course in high school biology and one in high school chemistry as well. It aims to provided students with the conceptual framework, factual knowledge, and analytical skills necessary to deal critically with the rapidly changing science of biology.
The two main goals of AP Biology are to help students develop a conceptual framework for modern biology and to help students gain an appreciation of science as a process. The ongoing information explosion in biology makes these goals even more challenging. Primary emphasis in Advanced Placement Biology course should be on developing an understanding of concepts rather than on memorizing terms and technical details. Essential to this conceptual understanding are the following: a grasp of science as process rather than as an accumulation of facts: personal experience in scientific inquiry: recognition of unifying themes that integrate the major topics of biology, and application of biological knowledge and critical thinking to environmental and social concerns.
The AP Biology Development Committee conducts
surveys in which professors at college regularly receiving the most AP
candidates respond to a questionnaire asking them to describe the content
of their introductory biology courses for biology majors. The AP
course outline that follows was developed by the AP Biology Development
Committee after a thorough analysis of survey results.
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