The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) courses are among the most academically demanding classes available to secondary school students. There exists a strong correlation between AP access and success in high school and college completion. However, predominately first generation, minority, and/or low-income students (underserved students) remain largely absent or grossly underrepresented in AP courses when compared with their more affluent, non-minority peers. This study presents a theoretical framework for self-efficacy, the aspects that contribute to the development of self-efficacy, and demonstrates the positive relationship between academic achievement and self-efficacy in a variety of academic domains. Finally, this proposed mixed-methods case study seeks to explore and understand the role a socially supportive co-curricular school club designed to invite underserved students into AP has on those same students’ sense of self-efficacy toward AP coursework. By investigating the specific words and actions that teachers, school staff, and peers use to help underserved students persevere through the challenges of AP, the study will contribute to a stronger understanding of how AP self-efficacy can be purposefully developed for underserved students, develop research-based interventions and supports designed to help underserved students access and ultimately succeed in rigorous AP coursework.

Collaboration between teachers and teacher librarians (TLs) faces fundamental challenges in the high school setting. Studies of professional library organizations have suggested that collaborations between teachers and TLs are effective in improving student learning, encouraging personal reading, and raising digital citizenship awareness. The conceptual framework and structure of the teacher and librarian collaboration model (TLC-III) is based on the notion that robust collaboration efforts involving groups of teachers have positive effects on students. Researchers have validated the TLC-III model in studies with various groups of teachers and TLs as instructional partners, but have not done so at the high school level. The aim of this study was accordingly to validate the TLC-III model at this level with various high school teachers across disciplines and to determine why some choose to collaborate with TLs while others do not and the factors that influence the formation of a collaborative environment at a large, comprehensive high school. This mixed-method study relied on 62 anonymous surveys and 22 face-to-face interviews to assess what is needed to improve collaboration as part of the learning environment at this school.

The research supporting the importance of high school programming in the entrance and persistence of students into higher education is dense and varied with several studies directly noting the importance of College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) courses specifically in the college admissions process. With typically smaller class sizes, more experienced teachers, and students with stronger academic backgrounds, those taking AP courses benefit from a perceived and actual AP advantage in both high school and subsequent higher education endeavors. Traditionally, however, there has been a significant gap within the make-up of students who enroll and succeed in AP courses. Despite the recognition of the import of AP coursework to future academic effort and dedicated efforts by educational and government entities to increase the number of students entering the AP program, Black and Latinx students remain significantly less likely to enroll in AP classes, take fewer associated national AP exams, and score lower on said exams than their White and Asian peers. A problem connected to students of color, the various issues associated with race and ethnicity have been identified as primary influences in the academic achievement gaps between Black and Latinx students and their White peers.

Much research exists to support the reasons why students of color are failing to enroll in AP courses at the same rate as their White and Asian peers; less so, however, exists that discusses these students’ experiences while enrolled in AP class, thus limiting our understanding of the elements that interact to hinder their engagement and achievement in class and in the subsequent national AP exam. Using a theoretical framework of Critical Race Theory and Figured Worlds from Holland et al., this study presents the cases of five Latinx and Afro-Latinx students navigating the particularly complex world of Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH). The research focused on how their experiences shaped their academic identity, how they were positioned and positioned themselves within the class as a result of their academic identity, and how their interactions with their teacher, their traditional and nontraditional peers, and the curriculum influenced their engagement and achievement within the class.