PROFESSIONAL STUDIES ASSIGNMENT

Professional Studies Assignment



Professional Studies Assignment

Evaluative Research on School Placement as Assistant Teacher

What defines an academically successful high school? Newsweek magazine's yearly rating of the top high schools in Britain measures schools primarily by the number of Advanced Placement (AP) classes offered and how many students take them (Behar, 2006,, 83).

Placement Programmes for Teachers

The Advanced Placement Programme is a programme that is used in many schools across the United Kingdom. This programme is designed to allow students to take advantage of studying the most difficult issues and receiving additional benefits in doing so. This programme benefits assistant teachers by allowing them to earn college credit and build their resumes. The Advanced Placement programme also uses different teaching methods. A to succeed in this programme, a student must be very interested in acquiring knowledge and dedicated to this exercise (Behar, 2006, 83).

The Advanced Placement programme covers many different subjects, from history to physics. To be placed in this type of programme, a teacher should be selected based on performance. The subjects taught in these classes are much more difficult than what a student will learn about during a regular class on the same subject. In most cases, the task is more intense and assistant teachers cover more information. The Advanced Placement programme is taught by special assistant teachers. To be a teacher in this programme, an individual must have a great working knowledge of the subject. In most cases, assistant teachers of these classes are specialists in their respective subjects.

Although this course is much harder than a regular class, offers several advantages to students. Students in these classes can sometimes receive college credit for these classes. This allows them to gain an advantage over their education by taking classes in advanced placement programme are that it allows students to build their curricula (Berci, 2005, 40).

The Advanced Placement programme was established in the decade after the Second World War in an effort to bolster the quality of education for a portion of secondary school students in Britain. The past fifty years has seen an unchecked growth in the programme, which created a decreased effectiveness for advanced classes (College Board, 2005b). Recently, there have been several proposed reforms that will attempt to maintain the quality of Advanced Placement classes, while enhancing the areas with which the programme has struggled in the past decade (Berci, 2005, 40).

Often Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses are lumped together as educators examine college preparation courses in high school. While the courses are similar, IB courses are not the focus of this study and after a brief explanation of the IB programme, they will not be considered in the study. The International Baccalaureate programme was founded in 1968 in Switzerland (Poelzer & Feldhusen, 1997). The purpose of establishing this programme was to assist students preparing for college by allowing them to take classes in high school that would be recognised by universities internationally (Nugent & Karnes, ...