Teacher Research Network Grant

New Teacher Study

Principal Investigators: Tom Tommet (St. Thomas) and Michele Kooman (Gustavus Adolphus)
Award Dates: 2003, renewable annually
Award Amount: $35,000

Introduction

The Teacher Research Network (TRN) was founded by the Transforming Teacher Education program (then part of SciMathMN) in 1998 for the purpose of studying Minnesota K-12 science and mathematics teachers in their first three years of teaching to better understand their teacher experience. It is well known that many new teachers of mathematics and science leave the profession after a few years. Our vision for the TRN project was to determine the causes of new teachers leaving the teaching profession during their first three years of service.

To that end, nine participating Minnesota teacher education institutions developed a set of instruments and protocols to study new K-12 science and mathematics teachers. TRN has studied 119 teachers since the 1999-2000 school year with these instruments and protocols.  Annual analyses of each of four categories of teacher (elementary science, elementary math, secondary math and secondary science) were completed for the first three years of the study. During the 2002-2003 school year a preliminary analysis was made of the complete set of protocols (103) then available.

As a result of a meeting held by TRN on July 10-11, 2003 and in a subsequent meeting with Dr. Frances Lawrenz of the University of Minnesota, it was decided that our data and analyses were valuable and needed to be shared with at least three audiences. These audiences were Minnesota teacher education institutions, K-12 administrators and our funders (SciMathMN and the Minnesota Department of Education). Our purpose is to complete further analyses of our data to address specific questions about the new teacher experience for each of these audiences. This proposal describes our request for funds to do just that.

Project Description

We are working on a two-phase project that seeks to analyze systematically previously collected data from participant teacher education institutions in Minnesota regarding new teacher practices and beliefs, in regard to teaching science and mathematics. This systematic analysis will lead to further disclosure of emerging patterns and themes that will serve to inform three audiences: SciMathMN and the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE); school administrators; and, teacher education programs in science and mathematics. This proposal consists of two phases. Phase One is composed of several important tasks: identification of emerging themes and categories in our data collection, identification of research questions from our three audiences that can be answered through a comprehensive re-analysis of our data, and finally determination of "products" that will be developed to serve our three audiences. Phase Two exclusively focuses on the development and distribution of our products to our three audiences.