The Impacts of Pre-service Supervised Field Experiences on Elementary Teachers Retention and Effectiveness in Mathematics

The Impacts of Pre-service Supervised Field Experiences on Elementary Teachers Retention and Effectiveness in Mathematics The Impacts of Pre-service Supervised Field Experiences on Elementary Teachers Retention and Effectiveness in Mathematics We propose a Track 1, Level 2 EHR Core Research in STEM Program study in which we will investigate the impact of elementary teachers pre-service supervised field experiences on their career retention and their students mathematics achievement once in the teaching career. We will follow 1,200 teaching candidates from multiple preparation programs longitudinally from their final year of pre-service preparation through their first 2 years of teaching. We will connect participants experiences in supervised field experiences to critical student and teacher outcomes, including students mathematics achievement, attendance, and behavior; and teachers career retention. We will further explicate the relationship between field experiences and teacher and student outcomes by exploring key aspects of teachers responses to their entry into the profession including their mathematics-related knowledge and self-efficacy, the quality of their mathematics instruction, and their well-being and related characteristics. We expect that higher-quality supervised field experiences will be directly related to more optimal student outcomes and higher career retention (a direct effect), and that this will operate partially through increased mathematical knowledge for teaching, increased self-efficacy for teaching mathematics, and higher observed mathematics instructional quality in the first years of teaching (mediation effects). Further, we anticipate that participants well-being and adaptive characteristics will play additional roles as mitigating factors that will either protect against or exacerbate these hypothesized direct and mediated effects. The Impacts of Pre-service Supervised Field Experiences on Elementary Teachers Retention and Effectiveness in Mathematics