AMES, Iowa -- Education reform is typically designed to make teachers more effective in the classroom. And Iowa State University curriculum and instruction assistant professor EunJin Bang has been part of a research team that has determined just how to do that with new secondary education science teachers.
For the last five years, Bang has been one of several researchers conducting a five-state study of nearly 100 new secondary education science teachers, funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The researchers have been determining what type of mentoring support programs for new secondary science teachers (called induction programs) make them most effective in the classroom and more engaged in a teaching career.
They've found that among four different types of induction programs, mentoring by science-specific experts produces new science teachers that develop more interactive learning environments.
"In the science-specific university program, the new teachers have face-to-face meetings with research assistants from science education programs, as well as with science teacher educators," said Bang. "And they will create this professional development program for them [the new teachers]. The mentors will observe the teachers' classrooms and they will video record their teaching and talk to them about it. So it is very intensive. They will talk about the content and about their science teaching within the context of their own teaching."
The most influential paper of the year
A study summarizing the first two years of that research will be honored at the international conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) as the most influential paper of the year published in its official journal, the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST). The study, "Beginning Secondary Science Teacher Induction: A Two-Year Mixed Methods Study," was published as an early view in the January 2012 issue of JRST.
Bang and five researchers who worked on this part of the study -- Julie Luft (University of Georgia), Jonah Firestone (Arizona State University), Sissy Wong (University of Houston), Ira Ortega (University of Alaska) and Krista Adams (University of Nebraska) -- will be presented the award at the NARST Awards Luncheon in Indianapolis on Tuesday, March 27.
The researchers collected data through interviews with 98 new science teachers from five states to study how four different induction programs -- electronic mentoring, science specialists, general school, or internship -- impacted the beginning teachers' teaching beliefs, content knowledge and teaching practices.
The study suggests that the science specific induction program is one way schools could build better science teachers.
"The paper asks, 'Is there an ideal induction program? And if so, what does it look like?'" Bang said. "This paper suggests why don't we, as a community, have some sort of system in which the science teacher educators stay closely connected to the new (science education) graduates, as opposed to just shipping them out. Also, we should explore ways to maintain close relationships within the school districts and with science teacher educators to help these new teachers."
Mentoring elementary science teachers in Council Bluffs
Bang is facilitating one such mentoring program for beginning elementary science teachers in Council Bluffs through the "Hybrid Mentoring for Beginning Elementary Sciences Teachers" (H-BEST) -- a program associated with the Center for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education. She says H-BEST matches four new teachers with one of two mentors who communicate online weekly about developing lesson plans. The mentors then visit the classrooms of their mentees to observe them teaching and to provide critiques. The program culminates with a lesson study open house in which all six participants sit down with Bang to collectively discuss how best to guide students in inquiry-based learning.
She sees the development of meaningful induction programs like this being vitally important for new teachers on the front lines of the nation's greater focus on STEM (science technology, engineering and mathematics) education.
"There is still a lot of exploration about what STEM-focused learning and teaching really means to teachers," Bang said. "We want to help new teachers, whose knowledge and skills are still general and abstract, understand what it means to connect science with mathematics, engineering and technology. We want to give them the chance to unpack and apply what they learn to their teaching practices."
The researchers plan to publish additional papers on data from
the later years of their five-year study.
