Navigating Breadth and Depth in an Advanced Placement Economics Classroom: A Teacher as Instructional-Curricular-Assessment Gatekeeper

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Economics: The Room Where It Happened

Abstract

This case study explores how one teacher’s instructional decisions and students’ experiences of that instruction relate to learning (and reasoning about) new knowledge and skills in an Advanced Placement (AP) Economics course. We used case study methodology (Yin, 2009) in order to examine the following research question. Observations revealed that the teacher, Ms. Walter, didn’t ‘look’ like the traditional AP classroom teacher. It appeared as though Ms. Walter ably negotiated the breadth and depth tension by including attention to both. However, classwork, assessment data and student interviews indicated that students’ learning remained superficial.

Authors

• Stephanie D. Van Hover, University of Virginia

• Colleen Fitzpatrick, University of Toledo

• Michael Paul Gurlea, University of Virginia

• Ariel Cornett, Georgia Southern University