From Research to Practice: Redesigning AP Science Courses to Advance Science Literacy and Support Learning with Understanding

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The College Board seeks NSF support to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the nation's Advanced Placement (AP) science courses. Based on recommendations from the National Research Council's report "Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools," the project will build frameworks for curriculum, assessment and professional development in AP Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Environmental Science. Recommendations from Learning and Understanding call for focusing on depth versus breadth in each of the sciences, and "helping students achieve deep conceptual understanding of the content and unifying concepts of a discipline." Other recommendations that the College Board will pursue in creating the new frameworks are: (1) articulation of an explicit cognitive model of how students learn in each domain, (2) identification of intermediate and long-term learning outcomes, (3) description of observable performance indicators, (4) design of structured performance tasks that elicit those indicators, and (5) training teachers to use their understanding of the learning model to select appropriate instructional activities.The project also builds on a planning activity (EHR 0332223) that has created a process for AP course redesign of the AP Biology course.