Rethinking teacher recruitment: New approaches to attracting prospective STEM teachers

该项目的目的是更好地了解利用创新技术吸引和招聘STEM本科生进入初级教师教育（ITE）。在某些学科领域（如STEM）为ITE招聘足够多的高素质申请人是英国和世界上一些国家的长期问题。高质量STEM申请者的短缺削弱了教师队伍，减少了许多儿童的受教育机会，并导致本可用于其他地方的经济资源（例如，通过持续提供招聘激励措施）的流失。教师短缺是政治、经济和社会因素复杂混合的结果。其中一个促成因素——也是本提案的重点——是招聘信息的有效性、创新性和覆盖面，这些信息旨在吸引潜在的求职者。该项目基于开发和测试可用于STEM招聘的新数字工具。在本提案中，我们概述了我们将如何开发和测试创新和前瞻性技术，以吸引和招募未来的STEM教师进入ITE。教师招聘的新技术招聘研究的进展为利用组织心理学、组织行为学和游戏化研究的方法进行积极和可扩展的新教师招聘干预指明了道路。我们将测试两种积极主动的教师招聘技术，它们具有有效、吸引人、经济和可扩展的潜力：(a)在线现实工作预览（RJPs），以及(b)“有说服力的”教学游戏。据我们所知，该项目将是首个利用这两种技术来应对教师招聘挑战的项目。现实的工作预览（RJPs）RJPs为潜在的申请人提供一系列他们在工作中可能遇到的工作场合的视频或文本样本，然后是问题（你应该怎么做？）和专家的反馈（你的回答与经验丰富的老师的回答非常吻合）。对rjp的研究表明，与广告活动等更一般的干预措施相比，rjp能提高员工的契合度，并能促进员工早日融入一个新领域。最近关于教师招聘的研究表明，RJP干预的原型提高了STEM学生样本的教学兴趣（Klassen et al., 2021）。在线“说服性游戏”可以通过让参与者沉浸在具有代理（即自我导向）的数字互动的参与活动（例如，教学模拟）中来塑造参与者的态度。在招聘过程中，有说服力的游戏可以用来吸引、激励和说服应聘者，并且可以增加潜在职业/雇主的吸引力。精心设计的游戏能够提供丰富而生动的感官体验，创造一种沉浸感和存在感，从而创造情境和突发的个人兴趣。在这个项目中，我们的重点是增加STEM学生进入ITE的流量，STEM本身代表了招聘前景的一个缩影：在一些STEM学科（如物理）中可以发现短缺，但在其他领域（如生物学）则不那么普遍。在工作包1中，我们探讨了多种信息（基于社会效用、个人效用和PV适合度）对教学相关态度和信念的综合影响。在工作包2中，我们开发并测试了一个教师招聘游戏，暂定名为TeachQuest。在工作包3中，我们测试了在线RJP干预和TeachQuest如何影响参与者的教学职业相关态度（教学兴趣、教学意图和教学自我效能感）和行为（ITE申请状态、保留ITE和进入专业实践的决定）。

The purpose of this project is to build a better understanding of the attraction and recruitment of STEM undergraduates into initial teacher education (ITE) using innovative technologies.Recruiting enough high-quality applicants in certain subject areas (e.g., STEM) for ITE is a chronic problem in England and several countries in the world. A shortage of high-quality STEM applicants for ITE weakens the teacher workforce, reduces educational opportunities for many children, and leads to a drain on economic resources (e.g., through the ongoing provision of recruitment incentives) that could be used elsewhere.Teacher shortages are the result of a complex mix of political, economic, and social factors. One contributing factor-and the focus of this proposal-is the effectiveness, innovativeness, and reach of recruitment messaging designed to attract potential applicants. The project is based on developing and testing new digital tools that can be used for STEM recruitment. In this proposal, we outline how we will develop and test innovative and proactive technologies to attract and recruit prospective STEM teachers into ITE.New Technologies for Teacher Recruitment Advances in recruitment research point the way to new teacher recruitment interventions that can be both active and scalable by harnessing methods from organisational psychology, organisational behaviour, and gamification research. We will test two proactive teacher recruitment technologies that have the potential to be effective, engaging, economical, and scalable: (a) online realistic job previews (RJPs), and (b) a 'persuasive' teaching game. To our knowledge, this project will be the first of its kind to harness these two technologies to address the challenge of teacher recruitment.Realistic Job Previews (RJPs)RJPs offer potential applicants a series of video or text samples of workplace situations that they can expect to encounter on a job, followed by questions (What should you do?) and feedback from experts (Your responses show an excellent fit with the responses from experienced teachers). Research on RJPs shows that they promote higher levels of fit than more general interventions such as advertising campaigns and promote early integration into a new field. Recent research focused on teacher recruitment showed that a prototype RJP intervention boosted interest in teaching in a sample of STEM students (Klassen et al., 2021). Persuasive Games Online 'persuasive games' can be designed to shape attitudes in participants by immersing them in engaging activities (e.g., a teaching simulation) with agentic (i.e., self-directed) digital interactions. Persuasive games can be designed to engage, motivate, and persuade applicants in the recruitment process, and can increase the attractiveness of a prospective vocation/employer. Well-designed games deliver experiences that are rich and vivid in sensory experiences, creating a sense of immersion and presence that in turn build situational and emergent individual interest.Research AimsIn this project, we are focusing on increasing the flow of STEM students into ITE, with STEM itself representing a microcosm of the recruitment landscape: shortages can be found in some STEM subjects such as physics, but are less prevalent in other areas, such as biology. In Work Package 1, we explore the integrative effects of multiple messages (based on social utility, personal utility, and PV fit) on teaching-related attitudes and beliefs. In Work Package 2, we develop and test a teacher recruitment game, tentatively titled TeachQuest. In Work Package 3, we test how an online RJP intervention and TeachQuest influence participants' teaching career-related attitudes (teaching interest, teaching intentions, and teaching self-efficacy), and behaviours (ITE application status, retention in ITE, and decisions to enter professional practice).