Collaborative Research: A Research Study of Teacher Retention and Network Formation in Noyce Communities of Practice

这个Noyce Track 4研究项目是一个合作项目，旨在研究教师入职作为教师准备的一个方面，影响教师融入其专业社区的方式。它将研究作为一个特定的实践社区（CoP）的成员如何影响教师的身份，对他们个人教学能力的信念，以及留在与教师留任相关的职业中的愿望。纽约州立大学石溪分校、肯塔基大学、肯尼索州立大学、明尼苏达大学、威斯康星大学奥什科什分校和密苏里大学圣路易斯市分校。Louis)在这项研究中跨越了美国，并代表了成功的Noyce教师准备项目，这些项目采用了各种招聘策略（例如，转行）、入职支持结构（例如，在线）和教师安置（例如，农村与城市）。这六个站点还将允许对来自不同教师培训项目的Noyce和非Noyce教师进行比较。目标是确定是否有一套核心的项目特征有助于每个入门项目的成功，或者是否有不同的项目特征对特定的人群有用（例如，为转行者提供定期面对面的会议，或为城市教师提供在线支持）。该项目还试图确定哪些项目特征会导致不同的社区结构（例如，主要与校内或校外的教师合作），以及该社区如何影响教师对该专业的看法（例如，教师与全州的专业人员联系在一起，并希望将该专业作为职业）。本研究中使用的主要研究方法是社会网络分析，这将用于确定教师与谁交换与教学相关的信息。这项研究将使该领域受益，因为它突出了对不同教师群体适当和有效的入职战略，并导致增加劳动力留用的愿望。该研究将告知组织科学中的劳动力问题，其中有限的工作明确采用了社会网络方法来解释人力资源结果。这个项目正在研究的理论是，教师在多大程度上可以在参与者的社会网络中发现与职业持久性相关的形成，并与Noyce准备和归纳特征相关。三阶段的研究设计将包括记录网络形成的前因、教师网络和网络的结果。在第一阶段，将收集关于每个站点的支持结构的信息，以及哪些活动和人口统计数据代表了参与者在入职期间的经历。将审查每个方案的计划重点与参与者的经验之间的一致性。在第二阶段，将使用以自我为中心的网络调查（数据集中在给定教师的当地关系社区，例如CoP）从参与者那里收集社会网络信息，以了解每位教师与谁交换与教学内容和教学法相关的信息，互动发生的频率，以及这些联系是发生在当地学校还是跨地区、州或国家层面。调查数据将被转换为生成STEM教师网络所需的矩阵，并利用最新的社会网络分析软件包检查教师的规模、密度、关系强度和地理邻近性。第二阶段的网络属性将使用第一阶段的数据进行建模，以确定哪些活动和支持结构有助于不同的结构cop。在第三阶段，将收集教师对其教学自我效能感、专业认同和继续留在专业的看法。第三阶段的数据将使用第二阶段的网络数据建模，以确定哪些cop影响理想的教师成果。为了从定量分析中加强因果关系的主张，教师将被问及哪些活动影响他们的CoP网络，以及网络的哪些部分影响他们的结果。第一阶段和第三阶段的工具将分别与美国国家科学基金会年度参与者调查和教育部教师随访调查相一致，因此本研究的结果可能会在未来的研究中推广到国家数据。

This Noyce Track 4 Research project is a collaborative endeavor to examine teacher induction as an aspect of teacher preparation that affects the way teachers become embedded within their professional community. It will look at how being a member of a specific Community of Practice (CoP) influences teacher identity, belief in their personal teaching abilities, and desire to remain in the profession related to teacher retention. The institutions (SUNY at Stony Brook University, University of Kentucky, Kennesaw State University, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis) in this study span the U.S. and represent successful Noyce teacher preparation programs with a variety of recruitment strategies (e.g., career changers), induction support structures (e.g., online), and teacher placements (e.g., rural vs. urban). These six sites will also allow for a comparison of Noyce and non-Noyce teachers emerging from the different teacher preparation programs. The goal is to determine whether a core set of program features contributes to the success of each induction program, or if distinct program features are useful for unique populations (e.g., periodic face-to-face meetings for career changers, or online support for urban teachers). The project also seeks to determine which program features lead to different community structures (e.g., collaborating mainly with teachers inside or outside the school), and how that community affects a teacher's perception of the profession (e.g., teacher is connected to professionals across the state and wants to remain in the profession as a career). The primary research methodology used in this research study is Social Network Analysis, which will be used to determine with whom teachers exchange information related to their teaching. The study will benefit the field by highlighting induction strategies appropriate and effective for diverse teacher groups, and lead to a desire for increased retention in the workforce. The study will inform workforce issues in the organizational sciences, in which limited work has explicitly adopted a social network approach to explain human resource outcomes.The theory being examined in this project is the extent to which teacher identify formation linked to persistence in the profession can be detected in participants' social networks and correlated to Noyce preparation and induction features. The three-stage research design will include documenting the antecedents of network formation, teacher networks, and the outcomes of networks. In Stage I, information will be collected about the support structures present at each site, and which activities and demographics represent the participants' experiences during induction. Coherence between the planned focus of each program, and the experiences of the participants, will be examined. In Stage II, social network information will be collected from participants using an ego-centric network survey (with data focused on a given teacher's local community of ties, e.g. the CoP) of who each teacher exchanges information with related to teaching content and pedagogy, how frequently the interactions occur, and whether the contacts occur in the local school or across regional, state, or national levels. Survey data will be transformed into matrices needed to generate STEM teacher networks, and examined for size, density, strength of ties, and geographic proximity to the teacher, utilizing the latest social network analysis software packages. Network properties from Stage II will be modeled using Stage I data to determine which activities and support structures contribute to different structural CoPs. In Stage III, teacher perceptions of their teaching self-efficacy, identity within the profession, and outlook on remaining in the profession will be collected. Stage III data will be modeled using Stage II network data to determine which CoPs influence desirable teacher outcomes. In order to strengthen claims of causality from the quantitative analyses, teachers will be asked which activities influence their CoP network, and which portions of the network effect their outcomes. Stage I and III instruments will be aligned to NSF Annual Participant Surveys, and Department of Education Teacher Follow-up Surveys, respectively, so results from this study may be generalized to national data in future studies.