STEM Workforce Development 
STEM Learning and Learning Environments Examining the Career Trajectories of Urban Math Teachers from a Selective Alternative Certification Program
Effective Years: 2015-2020
The goal of the research project is to describe the features of selective alternative teacher certification programs (ATCPs) that affect selective route mathematics teachers' (SRMT) professional pathways and to make informed recommendations to decrease the current high teacher turnover. While selective ATCPs are intended to address issues of teacher staffing and quality by recruiting high achieving graduates of the nation's most competitive colleges and career changers with impressive resumes, there is little understanding about the reasons for their mixed outcomes. Thus, the proposed project will utilize a multi-methodological longitudinal design that incorporates cultural-mathematical and sociological perspectives to 1) determine patterns of career trajectories of a representative sample of SRMTs and 2) examine how variations in the features of a selective ATCP affect SRMT retention. The results of the study will be useful to various stakeholders, including policymakers, district and school leaders, and directors of urban-specific teacher preparation programs by clarifying patterns in the career trajectories of SRMTs while also revealing how to retain them.. The study is framed by the literature on teacher turnover, alternative teacher certification programs, and teachers' professional life cycles. It is guided also by two theoretical perspectives, namely a sociological careership perspective used to examine SRMTs' career trajectories and a cultural-mathematical perspective that identifies the features of selective ATCPs that influence SMRT retention. The researchers will combine new survey and interview data with previously collected data on New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) to produce findings that could inform the development of mathematics teacher preparation programs and interventions for an improved urban mathematics teaching force. The project is supported by the ECR program that emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. ECR supports the accumulation of robust evidence to inform efforts to understand, build theory to explain, and suggest intervention and innovations to address persistent challenges in STEM interest, education, learning and participation.
12 Publications Related to This Project:
- Ties that Bind? The Teaching and Post-Teaching Trajectories of Black and Latino/a Community Insiders and Elite College Graduates
- The First-School Retention of Black and Latinx Community-Insiders and Elite College Graduates: Implications for the Recruitment, Selection, and Training of Urban Mathematics Teachers
- Maintaining Gaps in Teacher Diversity, Preparedness, Effectiveness, and Retention? A Program Theory Evaluation of Mathematics Teacher Training in the New York City Teaching Fellows
- Entering, Staying, Shifting, Leaving, and Sometimes Returning: A Descriptive Analysis of the Career Trajectories of Two Cohorts of Alternatively Certified Mathematics Teachers
- Demography as Destiny: Explaining the Turnover of Alternatively Certified Mathematics Teachers in Hard-to-Staff Schools
- Capital Flight: Examining Teachers' Socioeconomic Status and Early Career Retention
- Altruism, Jobs, and Alternative Certification: Mathematics Teachers' Reasons for Entry and Their Retention
- How Long Do Community Insiders and Outsiders Stay? Mathematics Teacher Preparation and Retention in an Urban School District
- Marketing a Culture of Achievement to Black and Brown Students: TNTP and Neoliberal Multiculturalism
- Patterns in Critical Incidents: Understanding Teacher Retention Through Career Decision Making
- It's Tough to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future: The Difference Between Teachers' Intended and Actual Retention
- Presumed Proficiencies, Credentialism, and the Pedagogy of Poverty: Mathematics Teachers from Selective Alternative Route Programs
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