Investigating how Opportunities to Learn Culturally Responsive Teaching Influence Beginning Elementary Mathematics Teachers’ Effectiveness and Retention

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

This project serves the national need for preparing and retaining an effective elementary school STEM teaching workforce prepared to provide differentiated mathematics instruction to all students, including students in lower socioeconomic status (low SES) geographic locations. Differentiated teaching approaches are practices which are responsive to individual students’ unique strengths, circumstances, and areas of need and have been shown to support students’ learning. However, teacher education programs vary in how pre-service teachers are prepared to apply differentiated teaching practices and little is known about how beginning teachers apply these teaching approaches in elementary mathematics classrooms. This project is investigating how teachers’ use of differentiated teaching practices influences their instructional effectiveness, their students’ mathematics engagement and achievement, and their retention in the profession. This research has the important potential to identify elements of teacher preparation that support beginning elementary school teachers in becoming more effective mathematics teachers who can consistently engage all students in mathematics, and who are retained in the field. Results could be broadly relevant for teacher education programs across the nation. This project at the University of Delaware includes partnerships with seven teacher preparation programs across the states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona. The overarching project goal is to provide education policymakers and teacher education program leaders evidence about effective integration of differentiated teaching practices in pre-service teacher preparation programs, and how such preparation experiences might translate into classroom practices used to teach mathematics, including the utility of differentiated mathematics teaching practices for teachers and students in lower-SES geographic locations. The experienced research team aims to conduct a longitudinal, mixed-method research design that investigates a sample of 200 early-career elementary school teachers that spans teachers' experiences during their final year of teacher preparation through their first two years of teaching. The research team intends to collect evidence about participating teachers’ opportunities to learn differentiated teaching practices, their attitudes, and what implications these practices have for students’ engagement during mathematics lessons. Using structural equation modeling, the team can explore factors relevant to how teacher preparation experiences influence beginning teachers’ effectiveness and retention. Findings are intended to be disseminated to education policymakers and stakeholders, program leaders overseeing teacher preparation through policy briefs, publications in practitioner-oriented outlets, and presentations at professional gatherings of teachers and preparation program leaders. 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.