- Gregory Rushton
- https://www.mtsu.edu/faculty/gregory-t-rushton
- Director, TN STEM Education Center
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Middle Tennessee State University
- Steven Berryhill
- Research Coordinator - Faculty
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Middle Tennessee State University
- Siying Jiang
- Graduate Student
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Stony Brook University
- Fatma Kaya
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Middle Tennessee State University
- Jiecheng Song
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiecheng-song-4b109596/
- Graduate Student
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Stony Brook University
- Preethi Titu
- Assistant Professor of Science Education
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Kennesaw State University
- David Yaron
- Professor of Chemistry
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Wei Zhu
- http://www.ams.sunysb.edu/~zhu/index.html
- Professor & Associate Dean
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- Stony Brook University
Choice
APTeach: A Scalable Community Approach to Improving Instruction in AP Chemist...
R305A180509
2021 (see original presentation & discussion)
Grades 9-12
APTeach is an online professional development community for AP Chemistry teachers to encourage them to adopt reform-based teaching practices that can enhance their students' learning and achievement. The goal of the project is to design an online community based on social contagion theory which allows and motivates teachers to reflect on and improve their teaching practices as well as understand how these interactions in the online community can change teachers' beliefs about effective chemistry teaching and teaching practices. APTeach invites teachers from all over the country to interact with each other via Slack messaging, Zoom workshops, and the APTeach website, all of which lead to the diffusion of successful teachers' beliefs and practices to enhance students' outcomes. In order to understand the relation between teacher participation in APTeach intervention and student outcomes, 240 teachers were recruited to join a randomized control trial with three conditions. The first was no access to APTeach resources, (2) Access to only content created by the community, and (3) Access to all APTeach resources (workshops, website, and slack channels). A series of AP exams were created by collaborating with expert AP chemistry exam writers and are available for teachers in all three conditions. This study is currently in progress and will allow us to compare students' outcomes based on teachers' conditions to understand how teacher interaction enhances students' outcomes. Additionally, we have collected qualitative and quantitative data to examine how APTeach intervention impacts teachers' teaching practices and beliefs about effective chemistry instruction.
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Gregory Rushton
Director, TN STEM Education Center
Welcome to "APTeach"! APTeach is an online professional development community that encourages chemistry teachers to reflect on and improve their teaching practice. Please feel free to comment or ask questions on any aspect of our IES-funded project. If you are interested in joining our community, we invite you to sign up at https://apteach.org/story!
We hope you enjoy our video!
Wei Zhu
Jiecheng Song
Steven Berryhill
Pooneh Sabouri
Great project, I have two questions:
(1) how does the reflection take place? is it structured (e.g., teachers will fill out a form or write a formal reflection) or is it through conversation (e.g., scheduled meetings or group interviews?)
(2) Do you have any strategy to sustain the teachers community?
Fatma Kaya
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Thank you for your questions!
Teachers can reflect on their teaching practice in small/ large group workshops and slack messaging. Teacher leaders schedule workshops and facilitate group conversations. We think small group interactions will lead to a sustained community over time.
Adem Ekmekci
Hi Greg!
I enjoyed the video and learning about your APTeach program. Were the teachers participated only local teachers or were you able to reach out to a bigger geographic area? Any plans on going on a national scale?
Wei Zhu
greg rushton
Adem, thanks for coming by, we were able to recruit teachers from across the US and even overseas...this was intended to be a large scale, national project...we have been able to reach >1500 teachers so far.
Wei Zhu
Adem Ekmekci
Wow, that's great. Congratulations on the impressive work!
Wei Zhu
Laura Larkin
Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow
Hi Greg-
This is such a great resource for AP Chemistry teachers - especially in smaller schools or districts where one might be the only chemistry teacher. How do teachers or district coaches or administrators find out about APTeach? I'm also wondering how remote learning has impacted AP Chemistry and APTeach. I'm a math teacher and know it's been very difficult without manipulatives and other hands-on experiences. It seems even more daunting in lab-based courses.
Wei Zhu
Wei Zhu
Professor & Associate Dean
Thank you very much Laura! I am a math/stat teacher myself and on the same team with Greg. We have been talking about expanding APTeach to Math & Stat teachers as well. Hope we can stay in touch to help bring AP teachers together in this hard^2 time.
Judi Fusco
Great video, Greg and Team! Great to see you all here! It sounds like your community is offering a place where teachers grow to trust each other and can really discuss the practice--so important. Looking forward to connecting and learning even more about the project soon.
Wei Zhu
Wei Zhu
Professor & Associate Dean
Thank you very much for your support, Judi!
Steven Berryhill
Research Coordinator - Faculty
Hi Judi,
Thank you for your response! Yes, APTeach is a great networking community and support system that allows teachers to regularly connect with others in their field. We are very excited to connect with you to share more about the project. Thank you for your support!
Bridina Lemmer
Technical Assistance Consultant
Colleagues of mine at AIR have created a similar virtual community of practice for CS teachers (https://videohall.com/p/2045). I look forward to seeing the results of your RCT! Online professional communities have become a great way to connect otherwise isolated teachers so they can engage in meaningful and collaborative professional learning.
How do you identify and support your teacher leaders? These are really the "glue" of such great and sustainable CoPs!
David Yaron
Professor of Chemistry
Thanks for the pointer Bridina.
We started with teacher leaders we knew before hand, and who were involved in work related to AP Chemistry (i.e. former members of the test development committees and current/former readers of the exam). Our current leaders are teachers who we did not know before this project and were recruited based on their strong contributions to the community. This new group is doing great, which we take as evidence that these types of professional communities can be sustained by recruiting leaders from within.
David Barnes
Associate Executive Director, NCTM
Very interesting! Could you share a little about the level of engagement you see with the teachers? Are there super users, typical users, and occasional visitors and how do their interactions compare and differ? Any sense of how/why they operate in these ways?
Preethi Titu
Assistant Professor of Science Education
Hi David, The engagement level of the teachers within our project is highly encouraging! We do see a typical range of involvement of the teachers with some being actively involved while some are occasional users.The pandemic allowed us to focus on ways to provide online professional development that supports teachers as they transition to new teaching approaches and how to effectively convey the course materials, including laboratories, through the online format. This has increased teacher participation and engagement. We are starting to notice some pattern in teachers involvement and engagement which mostly is need based depending on what content they are teaching and also based on their experience of teaching APChemistry which varies the level of interactions.
David Barnes
Associate Executive Director, NCTM
Being able to provide just in time support especially as teachers are developing new understandings and strategies seems like a real sweet spot. Very encouraging!
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.