A Portrait of Advanced Placement Teachers' Practices. Research Report No. 2005-7. ETS RR-05-09
Author: Paek, Pamela L.
Date: 2005-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Advanced Placement Programs,High School Students,Secondary School Teachers,High Schools,Teacher Competencies,Teaching Methods,Biology,Science Teachers,History Instruction,United States History,Teaching Styles,Comparative Analysis,Teacher Surveys,Test Construction,Educational Environment,Teacher Characteristics,Institutional Characteristics,Evaluation Methods,Course Content,Test Preparation,Statistical Analysis,Focus Groups,College Entrance Examinations

The Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) is dedicated to providing high school students opportunities to enroll in college-level courses while in high school. The advantages of such accelerated opportunities are both financial and educational. The AP Program is available internationally. As a result of its widespread availability, considerable effort is invested in defining course content (so that most colleges will give credit for taking AP courses), in providing curriculum materials that can be consistently implemented nationwide, and in constructing valid and reliable year-end assessments. Given the importance of teaching practices in terms of the success of the AP Program, the purpose of this study was twofold: first, to create surveys in order to gather information about the teaching practices of AP Biology and AP U.S. History teachers; and second, on the basis of the data gathered using these surveys, to document differences among AP teachers in both Biology and U.S. History with respect to instructional practices. To address these goals, the authors conducted a literature review to select relevant aspects of teaching practices, created surveys that were reviewed by several parties, and collected information about teacher practices by administering these surveys to a large, representative sample of AP Biology and U.S. History teachers. These data provided the basis for creating a range of descriptions of AP teachers' practices. In this study, the authors: (1) developed and pilot tested an instrument that could be used to document the practices of AP teachers; (2) systematically sampled AP teachers; (3) administered the final instrument to sampled teachers; and (4) summarized the responses for each of the two subject areas. Data were analyzed at the teacher level, separately for each of the two subject areas. This report is organized in the following way. First presented is the theoretical framework that guided the development of the survey. Then the methodology of the study is introduced, discussing data gathering methods, sampling, survey construction, and strategies used for data analysis. Having set the stage for the study, the authors then discuss the results of the analysis of the survey responses, first for the close-ended questions for AP Biology and AP U.S. History, and then for the overall results to provide the reader with an overarching view of the findings. The following are appended: (1) Comparison of Items from the Pilot and the Final Survey Drafts; (2) Content Coverage Analysis: AP Biology; (3) Content Coverage Analysis: AP U.S. History; (4) Survey of AP Biology Teachers; and (5) Survey of AP U.S. History Teachers.