The AYD program owes a great debt to the work of many education practitioners and researchers. Many of the core AYD strategies have their origins in the programs to nurture high mathematics achievement in traditionally underserved populations that were developed over the past twenty years by Uri Treisman, executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin. In many ways, the AYD program is a natural extension of his life's work. Other programs that were a great source of inspiration include AVID and Step-Up-To-High School, each of which has a proven record not only of increasing achievement but also of contributing to students’ development as scholars.
Despite the considerable gains that these predecessors to AYD have demonstrated, they have not fully capitalized on large stores of knowledge that come from current research in social, developmental, cognitive, and educational psychology. The AYD course was inspired by these research findings and explicitly incorporates them into its curriculum. In particular, the curriculum reflects the work of both prominent and rising psychologists and neuroscientists, including Joshua Aronson, Carol S. Dweck, Catherine Good, Claude Steele, Bernard Weiner, and Claire Ellen Weinstein. As their research shows, their work holds great potential for transforming youths' identities and skills as scholars.
Because this course builds on these important bodies of work, it has the potential for greater impact than would be possible if not for the efforts of these practitioners and researchers. Some, but not all, of the many valuable sources of additional information are:
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short: Classroom bargains and academic reform in the American high school.
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Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and
performance. American Psychologist, 52(6), 613–629.
Steinberg, L., Brown, B., & Dornbusch, S. (1996). Beyond the classroom: Why school
reform has failed and what parents need to do. New York: Simon and Schuster.
