An Exploratory Study: The Role of Social Networks and Self-Efficacy in the Retention of Noyce Teachers

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This exploratory study, supported by the National Science Foundations' Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program through Track 4 Noyce Research, will examine factors influencing the retention of early career teachers in America's high-needs schools. Drawing on a sample of Noyce Teacher Fellows, the study will investigate the role of teachers' personal networks and self-efficacy on teacher retention in high-need school settings. The findings of the study will be of broad interest to programs working to prepare, support, and retain early career teachers and of particular interest to the more than three hundred Noyce projects funded though the NSF Noyce Program. By identifying factors that influence Noyce teachers retention in high-needs schools, the study aims to enable Noyce programs to anticipate and address these factors in the future.The project will bring together experts from teacher education, educational research, social network analysis and STEM education - leveraging the expertise of each as well as their discipline-specific approaches - to create an innovative framework to explore the role of social networks and self-efficacy, and their relationship to Noyce project characteristics and teacher retention. This study will focus on Track 1 Noyce Teacher Fellows (early career teachers) and will explore the following: (1) whether and how Noyce teachers' personal networks and self efficacy impact teacher retention in high-need schools; (2) what school or school district-level characteristics might be associated with personal networks, self-efficacy and retention; and (3) whether and how individual Noyce project characteristics impact teachers' personal networks, self-efficacy, and retention. Guided by an exploratory sequential design, the study will begin with the collection of qualitative cognitive interview data to inform the development of a Teacher Personal Network Survey. In the second phase of the study, this newly developed survey will be administered to a national sample of Noyce Fellows alongside a previously validated self-efficacy instrument. This research will contribute to education literature on how teacher personal networks, support structures, and self-efficacy relate to teacher retention. In addition to developing a new instrument to explore teacher networks and updating a national Noyce Teacher Fellow database, this research will illustrate innovative methodology (social network analysis) to explore the relationships among early career Noyce teacher networks, self-efficacy, and retention.