Supporting Large Scale Change in Science Education: Understanding Professional Development and Adoption Variation Related to the Revised Advanced Placement Curriculum (PD-RAP)

PD-RAP is an investigation of how to support teacher learning as part of large-scale science reform. In partnership with The College Board, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Harvard University, we will be studying the professional development (PD) experiences of 20,000 high school Advanced Placement (AP) science teachers who must prepare their students for revised AP examinations in Biology, Physics, and Chemistry starting in 2013.

We will conduct a quasi-experimental research study that determines

1. the relationship between teacher characteristics (including contextual factors) and the PD patterns the teachers choose;
2. the relationship between the PD patterns that various types of teachers choose and student outcomes on the AP exams, and
3. the challenges encountered in delivering various forms of PD at this level of scale.