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

Noyce Track 4研究项目是一个合作项目，旨在检查教师入职作为教师准备的一个方面，影响教师融入他们的专业社区的方式。它将考察作为特定实践共同体(COP)的成员如何影响教师的身份认同、对其个人教学能力的信念，以及与教师留任相关的留任意愿。这些机构(纽约州立大学石溪分校、肯塔基大学、肯纳索州立大学、明尼苏达大学、威斯康星大学-奥什科什分校和密苏里大学-圣彼得堡分校)在这项研究中，诺伊斯教师培训项目成功地涵盖了全美，包括各种招聘策略(例如，转行者)、入职支持结构(例如，在线)和教师安置(例如，农村与城市)。这六个网站还将允许比较诺伊斯和非诺伊斯教师从不同的教师培训计划中脱颖而出。目标是确定一套核心计划功能是否有助于每个入职计划的成功，或者不同的计划功能是否对特定人群有用(例如，为转业人员举行的定期面对面会议，或为城市教师提供的在线支持)。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，主要与学校内外的教师合作)，以及该社区如何影响教师对专业的认知(例如，教师与全州的专业人员有联系，并希望以此为职业)。这项研究中使用的主要研究方法是社会网络分析，它将被用来确定教师与谁交换与他们的教学相关的信息。这项研究将使外地受益，因为它强调了适合不同教师群体的适当和有效的入职战略，并导致了增加劳动力保留率的愿望。这项研究将为组织科学中的劳动力问题提供信息，在组织科学中，有限的工作已明确采用社会网络方法来解释人力资源结果。本项目正在检验的理论是，在多大程度上，教师认同形成与专业坚持性有关，可以在参与者的社会网络中检测到，并与诺伊斯的准备和入职特征相关联。三个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，将收集关于每个地点存在的支持结构的信息，以及哪些活动和人口统计代表了参与者在入职期间的经历。每个项目的计划重点和参与者的经验之间的一致性将被审查。在第二阶段，将使用以自我为中心的网络调查从参与者那里收集社交网络信息(数据侧重于特定教师的当地联系社区，例如COP)，调查内容包括每位教师与谁交流与教学内容和教学方法有关的信息，互动发生的频率，以及接触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规模、密度、联系强度以及与教师的地理接近程度。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对不同的结构COP做出贡献。在第三阶段，将收集教师对其教学自我效能感、对专业的认同感，以及对继续从事专业的看法。第三阶段的数据将使用第二阶段的网络数据进行建模，以确定哪些COPS影响理想的教师结果。为了从定量分析中证实因果关系的说法，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NSF年度参与者调查和教育部教师跟踪调查保持一致，因此这项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.