Using Research Practice Partnerships to Take Preliminary Steps towards a Full-fledged Investigation of the Influence of Teacher Leaders on STEM Teacher Effectiveness and Retention

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This project aims to serve the national need to conduct research regarding STEM teacher effectiveness and retention in high-need school districts. Funds will support the principal investigators as they seek to increase capacity to conduct a research program that focuses on examining STEM teacher leader effectiveness and the leaders’ impacts on STEM teacher effectiveness and retention. Utilizing established research practice partnerships (RPPs) in three different geographic locations, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Carolina, university researchers will collaborate with high-need urban and rural school districts to identify the metrics and data sources that best align to the local context and goals that the project will use for measuring STEM teacher effectiveness, as well as STEM teacher retention. This Capacity Building project will focus on identifying needed data, deepening partnerships, and coming to agreement as to the evidence-based strategies that will undergird a future research effort consistent with the RPP approach. This project is led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in partnership with Middle Tennessee State University and the University of South Carolina. Researchers at these institutions will be working with schools in Hamilton County Schools (Chattanooga), Crosstown High School (Memphis), Lower Richland High School (Columbia), and four regional Educational Service Units in Nebraska. Project goals include utilizing the RPPs to identify the data sources the project will use to measure the influence of teacher leaders on STEM teacher effectiveness and retention in high-need school districts. This will position the RPP collaborators to develop a full research design to investigate STEM teacher effectiveness and retention in complex systems of high-need urban and rural local education agencies. In addition to leveraging RPPs, the project will use two evidence-based frameworks, the communities of practice framework and improvement science framework. This Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.