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From Research to Practice: Redesigning AP Science Courses to Promote Advanced Learning and Conceptual Understanding Jim Pellegrino, Co-Director LSRI, UIC (Click name for speaker's biography) In 2002, the National Research Council published the results of a two-year study of the Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. The report, Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools, calls for important improvements in advanced study in high school mathematics and science programs, and concludes that these programs' efforts to emphasize the key concepts in each field are compromised by covering too many topics in each course. The report recommends that advanced courses not be designed solely to accelerate progress through a curriculum by replicating typical introductory college courses. Such courses rarely reflect what we know about how students learn and often cover too much content superficially, sacrificing the opportunity to build science students' transferable conceptual understandings and inquiry skills. The NRC report suggests that the primary goal of advanced study programs "should be to help students achieve deep conceptual understanding of the content and unifying concepts of a discipline." In July 2006 the College Board accepted these challenges and embarked on the redesign of all four AP science courses (in biology, chemistry, environmental science, and physics) with support from the NSF. In this presentation I will report on the process and progress of the redesign effort to date and some of its implications. This includes initial work that has focused on definition of the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities for AP courses in each of the four disciplines. Related work has also begun on the construction of models of student knowledge and learning in each of the four disciplines using an evidence-centered design approach. I will also report on plans for subsequent redesign phases, including development of new AP Exams, the development of curriculum and instructional resources to support teaching and student learning, and a professional development program to support the instructors of these courses.
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