The present study investigated the object-spatial visualization and verbal cognitive styles among high school students and related differences in spatial ability, verbal-logical reasoning ability, and mathematical performance of those students. Data were collected from 348 students enrolled in Advanced Placement calculus courses at six high…

Using a data set exclusively prepared for and licensed to them by the College Board, the authors examined the growth of the Advanced Placement program in foreign languages and overall trends in regard to the number of candidates who sat for the foreign language exams, their gender, their scores, and their ethnicity over the 36-year period covering…

An integrated curriculum that is transdisciplinary in nature seems to be a good fit for 21st Century learning. There are, however, few examples of transdisciplinary curriculum at the K to 12 level. One exception is the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Programme (PYP) which features transdisciplinary curriculum for students from ages 3…

International mindedness and global citizenship are two key terms within international education, which underpin much of the discourse within the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. This article proposes how a participatory approach to education for international mindedness and global citizenship can help educators within international…

Both the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the new AP Chemistry curriculum focus on a deeper understanding of content, as well as application of concepts within science classes. A well accepted research-based method for improving student understanding and the ability to apply many of the abstract concepts presented in chemistry is…

Over the past fifteen years, AP Human Geography has grown in numbers and spread to almost every state. This article synopsizes the early history of the subject, summarizes the course and the exam, highlights positive impacts on the discipline of geography, and focuses on the following three issues: teachers who come to the course having majored in…

This mixed method research study set out to address the central problem statement of whether the Advanced Placement (AP) program results in higher academic growth and college preparedness than other rigorous course work. To understand and address this problem statement an explanatory sequential mixed method design was used (Creswell & Plano…

Background/Context: There is broad agreement about the benefits of taking AP and/or IB courses in high school. Nonetheless, student access to such courses remains uneven and inequitable, due largely to the practice of tracking students by perceived "ability." These tracking practices are often defended based on the contention that…

This article studies the differences in student learning outcomes associated with changes in the format of online learning resources. We compare completion rates and degrees of student achievement across several economic education learning modules produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Initially designed as a long-form online learning…

Women take qualifying exams and enter medical school at substantially lower levels than predicted by their interest in medical degrees at the end of high school. We examined how science course experiences contribute to gendered attrition in premed using a multicohort data set of 8,253 undergraduates taking the traditional premed sequence of…

There is considerable debate both in Australia and internationally about the best way for schools to deliver the thinking skills required for university study and professional work life -- skills that are often referred to by the term "critical thinking". This article reviews the literature on the effective teaching of critical thinking…

Drawing on a qualitative study of an educational reform and its external evaluation, I describe how a well-intentioned but poorly conceptualized evaluation helped perpetuate asymmetries in the generation and use of evaluation findings. This article explores this project's failure to clarify evaluator roles, identify intended users and expected…

I investigate how the educational demands of local labor markets shape high school course offerings and student course taking. Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 linked to the U.S. Census 2000, I focus on local economic variation in the share of jobs that do not demand a bachelor's degree. I find that schools in local labor markets…

This article examines the impacts of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), a statewide college-preparatory curriculum that applies to the high school graduating class of 2011 and later. Our analyses suggest that the higher expectations embodied in the MMC had slight impact on student outcomes. Looking at student performance in the ACT, the only…

This study examines access to International Baccalaureate schools in Australia. It is important to examine whether, as a highly regarded form of rigorous academic education, IB programmes are available to a wide range of students. We examine the location of schools in Australia that offer one or more of the IB Primary Years Programme, Middle Years…