Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.3390/educsci14050506

Publication Title

Education Sciences

Volume

14

Issue

5

Pages

506 (1-28)

Abstract

This quantitative, non-experimental study explored the relationship between the features of math and science teachers’ preparation programs and their graduates’ instructional rigor and persistence in teaching. Five math and science teacher preparation programs from across the United States were examined. Six sets of instructional tasks were collected from forty-six recent graduates of these programs to provide insights into novices’ instructional rigor, and employment data were collected for thirty-seven of these graduates three to eight years after graduation. Regardless of the program’s features, all teachers could design and implement instruction with moderate to high rigor. However, this ability was not the norm. Mixed-effect models suggest the strongest evidence between degree types (bachelor versus post-bachelor) was related to teachers’ persistence: novices from graduate programs were more likely to persist in the work. However, no program feature was strongly associated with instructional rigor. Further research is needed to determine if the differences we found in teacher persistence are due to the nature of applicants drawn to particular programs (undergraduate versus graduate) or the program’s structure. Future research is also needed to explore the influence of instructional context (i.e., district, school, and department norms for instruction) on math and science teachers’ instructional rigor.

Rights

© 2024 by the authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Data Availability

Article states: "The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not available because permission was not sought from participants to share the original data in this manner."

ORCID

0000-0002-5675-5045 (Rhemer)

Original Publication Citation

Rhemer, D. M., Rogers, W., & Southerland, S. A. (2024). Examining the influence of secondary math and science teacher preparation programs on graduates’ instructional quality and persistence in teaching. Education Sciences, 14(5), 1-28, Article 506. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050506

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