The Advanced Placement (AP) program provides the opportunity for high school students to enrol in advanced level coursework in a number of subjects, and potentially earn college or university transfer credit. AP is owned, created, and administered by the nonprofit College Board, and many post-secondary institutions provide transfer credit or…

The recognition of the DP (diploma programme) for university admission is crucial for the development of International Baccalaureate (IB) schools and the expansion of the IB network worldwide. In an era of higher education (HE) massification, accompanied by high failure and dropout rates, intense debates on access to HE are taking place in many…

In this paper, we explore an approach to understanding how multimodality works in a community of practice. Using a social learning framework, we show how a community of practice, involving a pair of high school students, engaged in perceptual, bodily, and imaginary experiences while discussing about calculus concepts in a dynamic geometry…

There has been considerable interest in British Columbia in improving secondary to post-secondary transitions, and the provincial government and secondary and post-secondary institutions have adopted a number of strategies intended to aid in successful student transition from one system to the other. This paper looks specifically at the policy and…

A decade ago the Advanced Placement (AP) program was introduced into the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Initially, schools embraced this opportunity to provide their students with opportunities that were previously unavailable. However, within a few years the AP program was relegated to urban and large regional high schools. Few…

In this article, the authors considered the use of the software Knowledge Forum to complete a curriculum-based project with students enrolled in asynchronous, Web-based Advanced Placement courses in Canada and the United States. Knowledge Forum is an online database that promotes written interaction in a social constructivist environment. The…

The International Baccalaureate, a special program for bright public and private high school students, is described in transcriptions of broadcasts from National Public Radio. Over half the 43 schools in Canada and the United States that offer the program are public. For the approximately 1,200 high school juniors and seniors in North America…

The transition of students from secondary school to college or university was reviewed by a special committee of the Council of Ontario Universities. Issues considered include: admission standards, subject requirements, advanced placement, program gaps and overlaps, evaluation and testing, transfers between colleges and universities, impact of…