Measuring and Changing STEM Teacher Stress to Promote Effectiveness and Retention

该项目旨在通过重点了解和解决高需求地区STEM教师压力危机，满足培养和留住有效数学教师的国家需要。在一个与压力相关的临床重大心理健康问题水平上升的时代，数学教师肩负着克服新冠肺炎疫情造成的学习损失的需求。许多教师报告说，这种紧张的需求超出了他们准备好的处理能力。这种压力可能会导致教师不太可能使用最有效的学生参与式教学实践，它可能会导致职业倦怠，导致教师离职。对于在高需求学区任教的职前教师来说，与压力、教师效率和职业倦怠相关的问题可能会增加。不幸的是，教师培训计划以及学校和学区管理人员没有做好应对这场危机的准备。此外，目前还没有经过验证的、可扩展的、可操作的措施来帮助他们预测或应对教师的压力。因此，这项诺伊斯研究项目将首先作为初步事项，创建一种经过验证的、可扩展的教师压力测量方法。使用可穿戴的光体积计传感器，将从100名职前数学教师和100名在职数学教师那里收集数据，作为压力测量开发的一部分。然后，这项措施将被用来测试关于如何在高需求学区提高STEM教师效率和留住教师的新假设。德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校和罗切斯特大学的这个项目包括与UTeach教师培训计划和两个高需求学区(Judson ISD和圆岩ISD)的合作伙伴关系。项目目标包括：(1)制定和验证在职和职前数学教师威胁型(相对于挑战型)压力水平的可扩展测量，该测量植根于挑战和威胁的生物心理社会(BPS)模型；(2)测试将数学教师的日常威胁型压力反应与教师有效性(实施更深入的学习实践)和保持能力联系起来的路径模型；(3)确定与教师的威胁型(相对于挑战型)压力反应最相关的管理者、课堂和教师层面的因素，因此这些因素是潜在的干预目标。该项目的学术价值来自于它将压力情感科学的最新科学进展的见解应用到数学教师压力和应对问题上，并确定了教师压力反应的动态(传感器/监测器)和被动措施。在该项目中开发和验证的压力测量方法将把教师的压力反应映射到课堂教学过程中，并调查教师的留任和有效性。更广泛的影响来自对如何通过解决STEM教师压力来提高高需求地区教师保留率和有效性的实际见解，以及可被研究人员和从业者广泛使用的措施和评分算法的发展。这个Track 4：Noyce研究项目是由Robert Noyce教师奖学金计划(Noyce)支持的。Noyce计划支持有才华的STEM本科专业和专业人员成为有效的K-12 STEM教师，并支持经验丰富、模范的K-12教师成为高需求学区的STEM硕士教师。它还支持对高需求学区K-12 STEM教师的有效性和留住的研究。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The project aims to serve the national need of preparing and retaining effective mathematics teachers through its focus on understanding and addressing the crisis of STEM teacher stress in high need districts. In an era of elevated levels of clinically significant mental health problems linked to stress, mathematics teachers are tasked with the demands of overcoming learning losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many teachers report this stressful demand is more than they have been prepared to handle. This stress can cause teachers to be less likely to use the most effective, student engagement teaching practices, and it can cause burnout that leads teachers to leave the profession. Issues related to stress, teacher effectiveness, and burnout may be elevated for pre-service teachers who teach in high-need school districts. Unfortunately, teacher preparation programs and school and district administrators are underprepared to respond to this crisis. Moreover, there are currently no validated, scalable, actionable measures that can help them to anticipate or respond to teachers’ stress. Therefore, this Noyce research project will first, as a preliminary matter, create a validated, scalable measure of teacher stress. Using wearable photoplethysmography sensors, data will be collected from 100 pre-service mathematics teachers and 100 in-service mathematics as part of the development of the stress measure. The measure will then be used to test novel hypotheses about ways to promote STEM teacher effectiveness and retention in high-need school districts. This project at the University of Texas at Austin and Rochester University includes partnerships with the UTeach teacher preparation program and two high-need school districts (Judson ISD and Round Rock ISD). Project goals include: (1) developing and validating a scalable measure of in-service and pre-service mathematics teachers’ levels of threat-type (versus challenge-type) stress, rooted in the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat; (2) testing a path model linking mathematics teachers’ daily threat-type stress responses to teacher effectiveness (implementation of deeper learning practices) and retention; and (3) identifying the administrator-level, classroom-level, and teacher-level factors that are most associated with teachers’ threat-type (vs. challenge-type) stress responses, and that are therefore potential targets for intervention. The intellectual merit of the project comes from its application of insights from the most recent scientific advances in the affective science of stress to the problem of mathematics teacher stress and coping, and the identification of ambulatory (sensors/monitors) and passive measures of teacher stress responding. Measures of stress developed and validated in the project will map teachers’ stress responses onto classroom teaching and learning processes, and investigate teacher retention and effectiveness. The broader impacts come from practical insights about how to improve teacher retention and effectiveness in high-need districts by addressing STEM teacher stress, and from the development of measures and scoring algorithms that can be used widely by researchers and practitioners. This Track 4: Noyce Research 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.