Economically disadvantaged and underrepresented high school students in many urban, rural, and small suburban communities don't have access to Advanced Placement® (AP®) courses either because of a lack of trained teachers, limited or no AP program, or a school history of low participation. Physics is often a "gate keeper" course to entry…

As online education has exploded in the past decade, the number of physics and physics-related massive open online courses (or MOOCs, to use the industry lingo) has grown substantially as well. Several such courses aim at high school students, especially those involved in the AP Physics program. One of us (BK) was involved in creating two such…

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…

The intent of this study was to present information about high-achieving students' career decision making associated with thinking styles. We gathered data from two International Baccalaureate (IB) programs and a Governor's School Program with a sample of 209 high-school students. The findings of this study demonstrated that the effect of program…

The free and open publication of course materials (OpenCourseWare or OCW) was initially undertaken by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other universities primarily to share educational resources among educators (Abelson, 2007). OCW, however, and more in general open educational resources (OER), have also provided well-documented…

The three Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) schools: East Garner International Baccalaureate Magnet Middle School (EGMMS), Garner International Baccalaureate Magnet High School (GMHS), and Southeast Raleigh Leadership and Technology Magnet High School (SRMHS) have shown progress on MSAP performance measures during the 3rd year of the grant.…

In today's Web 2.0 world, teachers are perpetually struggling with how to incorporate technology into the classroom effectively in order to meet the diverse literacy needs of 21st-century learners. Utilizing the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE, 2008) Position Statement addressing these needs, the theoretical framework of Lankshear…