We report findings from interviews with college admissions personnel (CAP) as part of a larger infrastructure project examining opportunities to enhance the value of out-of-school time (OST) STEM learning in the U.S. college application review and admissions process.Our findings report on how CAP employ holistic review practices with information on both formal and OST learning experiences in the context of STEM admissions to render admissions decisions.

This chapter describes a qualitative study of how organizations use information to evaluate and hire graduating students into entry-level positions from one pre-professional undergraduate program. The study investigates how campus recruiters and hiring managers make sense of student job applicants' cognitive, non-cognitive, and technical abilities from data presented in résumés, academic transcripts, and through various interview techniques. The findings provide insight into the opportunities and challenges to incorporating alternative representations of learning—Comprehensive Learner Records—into the recruitment and hiring process. The findings also reveal how information about learning and learners is used to establish pipelines for recruiting and hiring recent college graduates. The study informs the design of future assessment and credentialing infrastructures, with the goal of expanding how “learning” is measured, defined, and represented in higher education to enhance diversity, equity, and opportunity for learners.

When translating large-scale policy changes into educational practice, classroom-level implementation is crucial and dependent on teachers’ capabilities. Most research underscores the importance of professional development (PD) as a proximal factor to achieve educational change. Connected to the recent Advanced Placement (AP) science examination reform, this large-scale quantitative study (N Teachers = 9,096; N Students = 197,589) investigates teacher participation in different PD formats (i.e., face-to-face, online, materials) and their associations with teacher- and student-level outcomes. We found that teacher characteristics (e.g., gender and administrative support) were associated with the choice of the PD format. We also found AP subscore differences between students of teachers who participated in different PD formats. Furthermore, teachers who participated in formal PD activities tended to report higher challenges with the AP reform. Thus, this study encourages PD providers to implement changes alongside a variety of PD programs to account for the potential differential benefits for teachers.

Gameful pedagogy is a novel approach to teaching that has emerged in the past decade that emphasizes intentionally designing curricula to support student motivation. In this study we investigate how five gameful courses at a large R1 university have impacted students when analyzed with an eye towards equity: are men vs women, underrepresented minorities vs majority students, and first-generation students vs traditional students able to achieve similar amounts of success in gameful courses? Results show that for both men and minority students, there is evidence to suggest they are underachieving in the courses studied as compared to women and majority students, but when we control for prior academic performance these trends disappear. For first-generation students, we see conflicting evidence, with cases of both under and over-achievement present. We again see these discrepancies disappear when we control for prior performance.

We introduce gameful learning, a pedagogical approach rooted in both motivation theory and principles of successful game design. The approach complements cognitively-based design approaches that are more typically employed in the Learning Sciences. This paper describes the roots of the pedagogy, its importance in supporting deep learning in the current educational context, its underpinnings in motivation, and core principles for design.

This empirical study analyzed data from 638 teachers and 11,800 students in low-socioeconomic status (SES) urban schools (and schools with urban characteristics) exploring associations of school, teacher, teaching, and professional development characteristics toward student performance on the revised Advanced Placement (AP) Biology and AP Chemistry examinations. The analyses indicated that districts per-student funding allocations, the days of instruction, teachers’ knowledge and experience, and some aspects of teachers’ professional development participation were significantly associated with student performance on AP science examinations that was better than predicted by students’ Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) scores.

From 2012-2015, Advanced Placement (AP) science courses underwent a large-scale curricular reform to include more scientific inquiry and reasoning, reduce emphasis on broad content coverage, and focus on depth of understanding, with corresponding changes in high-stakes AP examinations. In this study, we explored how teachers prepared for and adapted to this reform over a three-year period. Data included four waves of individual interviews with 22 AP Biology and Chemistry teachers across the United States. Data were qualitatively analyzed using emic and etic coding. Four themes were developed from these data: (1) initial perceptions about the reform including uncertainty, anxiety, and excitement, (2) preparation for reform, (3) impact of time, and (4) intersection of affinity toward the reform with time and uncertainty. Although teachers faced a variety of implementation challenges, these did not always influence their professional development (PD) choices. Rather, choices were more often driven by the price and proximity of those activities, resulting in a jumbled melange rather than a coherent, extended series of learning experiences. Despite a variety of attitudes, beliefs and instructional skills, teacher beliefs about the purpose and value of the reform-over and above their learning experiences-influenced the time needed to transition and to become comfortable with the redesigned course. This study has implications for how teachers may respond to large-scale, top-down, curriculum reforms (e.g., NGSS, Common Core) and how education leaders, policy makers, and PD providers might support teachers in their efforts to adapt efficiently and effectively.

Background Many students enter into postsecondary education without the preparation to face the demands of postsecondary coursework in science. Increasingly, policymakers and educational researchers are responding to calls for reforming secondary education to provide more opportunity for all students to receive high-quality education and to become career and college ready. Purpose This study attempts to identify levers to increase student learning in secondary education. In particular, it examines relationships between school, teaching, teacher, and teacher professional development characteristics and student scores on high-stakes Advanced Placement (AP) examinations in the sciences. Setting This study is situated in the context of the large-scale, top-down, nationwide AP curriculum and examination reform in the sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) in the United States. This is an unprecedented opportunity to analyze changing educational landscapes in the United States with large-scale national student-, teacher-, school-, and district-level datasets across multiple science disciplines and different stages of the curriculum reform implementation connected to a standardized and high-stakes student outcome measure. Population This study analyzes nationwide data samples of the AP Biology, AP Chemistry, and AP Physics population during the first, second, and third year of the curriculum reform implementation. Across disciplines and years, the analytical samples include a total of 113,603 students and 6,046 teachers. Research Design This empirical quantitative study uses data from web-based surveys sent to all AP science teachers. Additionally, the College Board provided student- and school-level data for all students taking AP examinations. Data preparation methods included exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Associations with student achievement were analyzed through a multilevel ordered logistic regression analysis, separately by science discipline and year of the curriculum reform implementation. Afterwards, results were aggregated through a meta-analysis. Findings Even after controlling for student background variables, roughly 60% of the AP score variance could be explained at the teacher and school levels. In particular, teachers’ perceived administrative support, self-efficacy, teaching experience, and elements of classroom instruction were related to student performance. Notably, teachers’ professional development participation—which has been a major focus of interventions—has a small, mixed impact on student achievement. Conclusion The identified levers for improving student achievement provide a strong rationale for the continued efforts of policymakers to improve school environments and to support science teachers, with the ultimate goal of improving student learning to help all students to be prepared for college and ready for their future careers.

This mixed-methods observational study analyzes Advanced Placement (AP) Biology teachers' engagement in microblogging for professional learning. Data from three hashtag-based Twitter communities-#apbiochat, #apbioleaderacad, and #apbioleaderacademy (121 users; 2,253 tweets)-are analyzed using educational data mining, qualitative two-cycle content analysis, social network analysis, linear and logistic regression analyses, and hierarchical linear modeling. Results indicate that teachers' use of Twitter reflects aspects of high-quality professional development. Notably, Twitter's nonhierarchical organization affords shared content creation and distribution. Additionally, Twitter allows for different temporal participation patterns and supports the personalization of learning experiences aligned to teachers' needs and preferences. Furthermore, teachers frame their interactions on Twitter positively-thus, creating a supportive environment for professional learning that might reduce perceived professional isolation. Based on this analysis, policymakers and school leaders should feel comfortable encouraging teachers to use microblogging as part of their professional learning activities.

Social media play an increasing role in our everyday lives and in education. Teachers and administrators may use social media for professional learning, to find materials for use in the classroom, and as a vehicle for engaging students with each other or with the world at large. As this body of scholarship continues to grow, now is the time to reflect on where the field might go from here to conduct the most impactful scholarship on education and social media. Accordingly, this chapter proposes research directions and approaches that promise to advance this expanding field, grounded in insights from the long history of studying technology in education, including over a decade of research on social media. We summarize insights from reviews of the existing research literature on learning and teaching with social media in education. Next, we apply a typology of the kind of studies needed to advance the field of education and educational technology as a useful lens for assessing prior work, identifying gaps in the knowledge base, and envisioning potential research directions. The chapter argues that new scholarly work is needed into three main areas: (1) research focus, or the subjects or topics of research that are needed; (2) methodological work, or new or underutilized approaches to studying education and social media; and (3) conceptual work, or theorization or framing of studies in education and beyond. We provide specifics in each of these areas in the final section.

Over the past decade, the field of teacher professional learning has coalesced around core characteristics of high quality professional development experiences (e.g. Borko, Jacobs, & Koellner, 2010. Contemporary approaches to teacher professional development. In P. L. Peterson, E. Baker, & B. McGaw (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (Vol. 7, pp. 548-556). Oxford: Elsevier.; Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017. Effective teacher professional development. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute). Many countries have found these advances of great interest because of a desire to build teacher capacity in science education and across the full curriculum. This paper continues this progress by examining the role and impact of an online professional development community within the top-down, large-scale curriculum and assessment revision of Advanced Placement (AP) Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. This paper is part of a five-year, longitudinal, U.S. National Science Foundation-funded project to study the relative effectiveness of various types of professional development in enabling teachers to adapt to the revised AP course goals and exams. Of the many forms of professional development our research has examined, preliminary analyses indicated that participation in the College Board's online AP Teacher Community (APTC) - where teachers can discuss teaching strategies, share resources, and connect with each other - had positive, direct, and statistically significant association with teacher self-reported shifts in practice and with gains in student AP scores (Fishman et al., 2014). This study explored how usage of the online APTC might be useful to teachers and examined a more robust estimate of these effects. Findings from the experience of AP teachers may be valuable in supporting other large-scale curriculum changes, such as the U.S. Next Generation Science Standards or Common Core Standards, as well as parallel curricular shifts in other countries.

Situated in the context of the Advanced Placement curriculum reform in the sciences, this quantitative study validates selected elements of Desimone's (2009) conceptual framework on teacher professional development. Using national data sets with data from 133 336 students and 7434 teachers, multi-level structural equation models indicate that professional development participation and contextual school- and teacher-level factors influence teachers' classroom practices. In turn, aspects of instructional enactments characteristics are significantly, but very weakly, associated with student performance. Thus, this study reinforces calls to provide teachers opportunities for high-quality professional development and suggests to advance research that identifies effective instructional practices. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper describes research and development around two gameful courses that reimagined their assessment systems to better support student autonomy and promote engagement. We present results from an ongoing classroom-based research study that signals the success of these designs and, in so doing, explore key elements of what we call gameful design: the process of redesigning core elements of a learning environment to better support intrinsic motivation. We describe this process and discuss a set of promising practices for the design of gameful courses. Results from three studies indicate that gameful course design is positively related to students working harder and feeling more in control of their class performance.

This quantitative study describes how teachers responded to the large-scale, top-down, mandated curriculum and examination reform of the Advanced Placement (AP) program in chemistry. This study analyzed data from a nationwide sample of teachers (N = 1,062) teaching redesigned AP Chemistry courses in the first two years of the curriculum reform. Repeated measures analysis of covariance (RM-ANCOVA) indicated that teachers' perceived challenges about the AP redesign substantially decreased once they gained more experience teaching redesigned AP Chemistry courses. Teachers reported that inquiry laboratory investigations and changes in the AP examinations were the most challenging aspect of the curriculum reform, whereas the use of new textbooks and chemistry content was perceived as the least challenging. With respect to classroom practices, teachers more frequently enacted instructional elements directly related to the AP examination instead of incorporating references to core elements of the curriculum reform in their instruction. Similarly, though teachers reported frequently conducting laboratory investigations in their classrooms, only about 25% of the laboratory investigations included elements of student generated inquiry, an important component of the redesigned AP Chemistry program. Surprisingly, teachers' self-reported classroom instruction remained similar in both the first year and the second year of the AP redesign. In general, this study suggests that school leaders and administrators should not be discouraged when teachers experience challenges during early phases of curriculum reforms. Adaptation to reform takes time. However, teachers may need special encouragement to adopt more in-depth aspects of curriculum reforms.

This study explores how the relationship between college students' learning strategies and their grade point average (GPA) differs across two culturally different institutions. Surveys of 621 students at a South Korean university and 824 students at a university in the USA were used to assess four types of learning strategies: motivation-related, assignment/task-related, planning/time-related, and cognition-related strategies. The results show that all four types of learning strategies significantly predict students' GPA at the Korean university, whereas only motivation-related and assignment/task-related strategies predict students' GPA at the US university. The cognition-related learning strategy factor is the strongest predictor of GPA for Korean students, but it is unrelated to US students' GPA. The resulting differences in the learning strategies used to obtain high achievement are interpreted through the lens of cultural influence and institutional accountability with respect to the missions of higher education institutions.