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的STEM教师压力危机，满足国家准备和留住有效数学教师的需求。 在一个与压力相关的临床显著心理健康问题水平升高的时代，数学教师的任务是克服COVID-19大流行造成的学习损失。许多教师报告说，这种紧张的要求超过了他们准备处理的范围。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教学实践，并可能导致教师职业倦怠。与压力，教师的有效性和职业倦怠有关的问题可能会升高职前教师在高需求学区任教。不幸的是，教师培训计划以及学校和地区管理人员对应对这一危机准备不足。 此外，目前还没有有效的、可扩展的、可操作的措施可以帮助他们预测或应对教师的压力。因此，这个诺伊斯研究项目将首先，作为一个初步的问题，创建一个验证，可扩展的教师压力的措施。使用可穿戴式光电体积描记传感器，数据将从100名职前数学教师和100名在职数学教师中收集，作为压力测量发展的一部分。 然后，该措施将用于测试关于如何提高STEM教师的有效性和高需求学区的保留率的新假设。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教师准备计划和两个高需求学区（贾德森ISD和朗德罗克ISD）的合作。项目目标包括：（1）开发并验证了一个可测量在职和职前数学教师威胁类型水平的可扩展测量方法（2）检验数学教师日常威胁型压力反应与教师效能的路径模型（实施更深入的学习实践）和保留;（3）找出与教师威胁类型最相关的管理者层面、班级层面和教师层面的因素（相对于挑战型）压力反应，因此是干预的潜在目标。 该项目的智力价值来自其应用的见解，从最新的科学进展的情感科学的压力的问题，数学教师的压力和应对，并确定流动（传感器/显示器）和被动措施的教师压力反应。 该计划所发展和验证的压力测量方法，将反映教师在课堂教学过程中的压力反应，并调查教师的留任率和效率。 更广泛的影响来自于对如何通过解决STEM教师压力来提高高需求地区教师保留率和效率的实际见解，以及可以被研究人员和从业者广泛使用的措施和评分算法的开发。这个轨道4：诺伊斯研究项目是通过罗伯特诺伊斯教师奖学金计划（诺伊斯）的支持。诺伊斯计划支持有才华的STEM本科专业和专业人士成为有效的K-12 STEM教师和经验丰富的模范K-12教师，成为高需求学区的STEM硕士教师。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.