Collaborative Research: Understanding Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Outcomes in Texas

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In the 2010 National Research Council's report, Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy, areas related to STEM teacher preparation that lacked a sufficient research base were highlighted. This Noyce Track 4A research project will engage eight universities in Texas in a collaborative research study of the characteristics of Noyce pre-service teacher programs related to effective recruitment, preparation, and retention. The University of Houston, Stephen F. Austin State University, the University of Houston-Clear Lake, the University of Houston-Downtown, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Arlington, Texas State University, and Texas A&M University-Kingsville will collaborate to promote rigorous evaluation of components of their respective Noyce STEM pre-service education programs. The institutions in the partnership represent a broad array of programs encompassing differences in characteristics such as setting (rural vs. urban), disciplinary focus (e.g., mathematics, general STEM education), and students recruited into the program (undergraduates, post-baccalaureate students, career changers). In addition, they vary in implementation methodology and program components. Through this research partnership, these programs will collect and share data, collaborating with the University of Houston's Institute for Educational Policy Research and Evaluation (IEPRE) and the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Advancement of Teacher Education (CREATE), a multi-system consortium comprised of fifty-six teacher education institutions across Texas, to enable a large study that will allow for investigation of components leading to increasing the number of effective STEM teachers in high-need classrooms. In particular, data sharing between the programs and CREATE, which provides access to administrative data regarding teacher movement and data connecting classroom teachers to student achievement, will facilitate connection of program characteristics to teacher effectiveness, movement, and retention.This eight institution collaborative partnership will seek to answer the following four broad research questions: 1) Among participants in implemented Noyce programs, what are the characteristics of the associated university-based programs? 2) For teacher candidates who enter and remain in the teaching profession, how do Noyce and non-Noyce participants compare with respect to a variety of individual and receiving campus characteristics? 3) Relative to their non-participating peers, to what extent and in what ways does teacher participation in Noyce-based preparation have subsequent influence on K-12 student academic performance? and 4) How are state policies influencing recruiting and retaining teachers? These questions will be addressed through both qualitative and quantitative methods, including descriptive analysis of interviews, geographic information system (GIS) mapping, event history analysis, and propensity score analysis to create matched samples of Noyce and non-Noyce prepared teachers that are similar on baseline characteristics to enable comparison of measures of teacher effectiveness. The final question will be addressed through policy analysis. This unique research partnership that joins several Noyce programs in a single state will provide a model for evaluating provider practices from retention through induction to identify program components promoting effective recruitment, training, and retention of STEM teachers in high needs schools. The results of this multi-institutional study will have the potential to inform teacher education programs across the country, particularly related to recruiting, preparing, and retaining teachers of STEM disciplines who teach students in high need settings, as well as policies that enhance or inhibit this.