This session is offered during WaltonAPSI In-Person Event 3: June 23-26, 2025
Steve Jones has taught AP Psychology and/or intro psychology for more than twenty years in Durham (NC) Public Schools. He’s served as chair and member at large on the committee of the American Psychological Association’s Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS).
He’s been awarded national excellence in high school psychology teaching awards from TOPSS (2016) and the APA’s Society for the Teaching of Psychology (2020).
For four years he served on the College Board’s AP Psychology Test Development Committee and has been an active Reader and Table Leader at the annual AP Reading.
He has presented at a dozen national conferences on the teaching of psychology including the Psych One Conference, AP Annual Conference, and the NCSS Annual Conference.
Steve is a National Board Certified teacher in the area of Adolescence and Young Adulthood/Social Studies-History. He co-founded the blog Teaching High School Psychology and actively tweets as @highschoolpsych.
Steve lives in Durham with his wife and children, and loves crossword puzzles, baseball, and travel.
The College Board’s redesign for AP Psychology is here and takes effect for the 2024-2025 school year. At this APSI, we will thoroughly cover the course and exam revisions that reflect the evolving landscape of introductory psychology.
This four-day institute is intended to help both new instructors of AP Psychology (less than 3 years of experience) as well as experienced teachers of the AP Psychology course. The session will cover necessary information regarding the AP exam structure, philosophy and assessment. Preparation for both the multiple-choice and free-response portion of the exam will be addressed as well as a simulation of how the FRQs are graded.
While the session will cover all Units in the AP curriculum, we will spend an extended period of time on research methods as a theme that runs throughout the course and is covered each year by one of the two free-response questions.
In addition to focusing on the content of the research unit, we will focus on pedagogy, class demonstrations, and resources provided by the College Board. This will serve as a model for other chapters. Participants will also be given time to explore AP classroom and create a schedule for the year as well as time to build their first unit. By the end of the week, new instructors to AP Psychology should have the tools necessary to teach an engaging and informative AP Psychology course.