Award Abstract # 1821710
Collaborative Research: Get the Facts Out: Changing the Conversation around STEM Teacher Recruitment

NSF Org: DUE
Division Of Undergraduate Education
Recipient: TRUSTEES OF THE COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES
Initial Amendment Date: June 18, 2018
Latest Amendment Date: May 30, 2023
Award Number: 1821710
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Leah McAlister-Shields
lmcalist@nsf.gov
 (703)292-8712
DUE
 Division Of Undergraduate Education
EDU
 Directorate for STEM Education
Start Date: July 1, 2018
End Date: June 30, 2024 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $2,512,620.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $2,512,620.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2018 = $2,512,620.00
History of Investigator:
  • Wendy Adams (Principal Investigator)
    wkadams@mines.edu
  • Michael Wittmann (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Shari Stockero (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Terri Chambers (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Douglas Ensley (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Monica Plisch (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Colorado School of Mines
1500 ILLINOIS ST
GOLDEN
CO  US  80401-1887
(303)273-3000
Sponsor Congressional District: 07
Primary Place of Performance: Colorado School of Mines
CO  US  80401-1887
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
07
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): JW2NGMP4NMA3
Parent UEI: JW2NGMP4NMA3
NSF Program(s): Robert Noyce Scholarship Pgm,
IUSE
Primary Program Source: 04001819DB NSF Education & Human Resource
Program Reference Code(s): 8209, 9178
Program Element Code(s): 179500, 199800
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.076

ABSTRACT

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) Development and Implementation project seeks to dispel misperceptions associated with being a teacher of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the middle and high school level. Recent research in STEM teacher preparation has identified strongly held beliefs about the teaching profession, many of which are misperceptions. These misperceptions discourage STEM undergraduates from exploring teaching as a viable career option. Study results also suggest that many college and university faculty in STEM departments either do not mention middle or high school teaching as a career option or misrepresent the profession. Major misperceptions include inaccurate beliefs: (1) that the salary gap between teaching and private sector employment is very wide; and (2) about tangible and intangible benefits of the profession. This "Get the Facts Out" project has three aims. First, to change perceptions about the K-12 mathematical and physical sciences teaching professions among faculty, students, and parents. Second, to increase the frequency of faculty engaging in practices recommended in the Get the Facts Out toolkit. Third to increase the numbers of mathematics, chemistry, and physics majors who enroll in a teacher certification program. This project builds upon prior work, which includes the development of an instrument, Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession (PTaP), designed to probe STEM students' attitudes and beliefs about teaching, a set of interactive materials called "MythBusters," and a pilot study. Organizational partners include the Colorado School of Mines, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the Mathematical Association of America, and several colleges and universities to serve as study sites. The societies aim to leverage their connections with disciplinary departments and engage change agents to implement a national campaign through interactive dissemination and support.

The project intends to develop and refine a "Get the Facts Out" campaign toolkit to support local faculty champions in changing the conversation about STEM teaching careers in their departments. The toolkit, based on pilot interventions that show positive results in shifting perceptions among students and faculty, and which have been shown to outperform traditional recruitment efforts, will be designed to be customizable and adaptable to the local situation. The materials and strategies will include both student-facing and faculty-facing resources and a how-to guide for running interactive events, including but not limited to slide decks, clicker questions, and handouts with national survey data on retention, job satisfaction, and student loan forgiveness. In addition, sample informational handouts on teacher salaries, comparisons of teacher and faculty salaries, and retirement benefits, with instructions on how to customize these with local data. Finally, the project will create brochures and posters that incorporate tested messaging strategies, and 60-second narratives and single-sentence "bulleted messages" that can be used as conversation starters in emails or other resources designed by the implementer. After funding ends, it is anticipated that the campaign will be sustained by each society. To inform and improve national and local campaigns, this project intends to conduct research to understand which of the strategies in the "Get the Facts Out" toolkit are most effective, both in terms of impact on faculty and student perceptions and faculty uptake over time. For this study, large-scale quantitative data to provide statistically strong results will be examined and qualitative data designed to enable a deeper understanding of factors that influence outcomes will be gathered. To better understand the effect of faculty and student perceptions on student career choice, the project intends to look for correlations with department success in preparing mathematics and science teachers and with institutional, departmental and student characteristics. This unique project is designed to reach STEM majors in a large fraction of all U.S. mathematics, chemistry and physics departments and has potential to significantly address teacher shortages in these high-need STEM disciplines. The IUSE: EHR program is a core NSF undergraduate STEM education program that seeks to improve the effectiveness of undergraduate STEM education for both majors and non-majors, including the undergraduate preparation of K-12 STEM teachers. This project has the potential to speak boldly regarding misperceptions about teachers held by undergraduate STEM majors and the faculty who teach them and to ultimately impact career decisions of future middle and high school STEM teachers across the nation.

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.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Adams, W. K. and Plisch, M. and Plantt, T. "Have a passion for teaching? Consider high school teaching" American Journal of Physics , v.87 , 2019 10.1119/1.5094433 Citation Details
Breakall, Jared B. and Logan, Savannah L. and Adams, Wendy K. "Faculty perceptions of grade 7-12 math and science teaching as a career: Evidence from a reduced-basis factor analysis of the PTAP.HE Instrument" 2021 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2021.pr.Breakall Citation Details
Breakall, Jared B. and Logan, Savannah L. and Pearson III, Richard L. and Pyper, Brian A. and Adams, Wendy K. "Maybe we arent that different after all: Faculty perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching as a career" 2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2020.pr.Breakall Citation Details
Logan, Savannah L. and Breakall, Jared B. and Adams, Wendy K. "A comparison of student perceptions of the teaching profession at minority-serving and non-minority-serving institutions" Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2021.pr.logan Citation Details
Logan, Savannah L. and Breakall, Jared B. and Pearson, Richard L. and Adams, Wendy K. "College faculty support for grade 7-12 teaching careers: survey results and comparisons to student perceptions" 2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2020.pr.Logan Citation Details
Logan, Savannah L. and Pearson III, Richard L. and Adams, Wendy K. "GFO copywrite: development and testing of written and visual materials for recruiting STEM teachers" PERC 2019 , 2020 10.1119/perc.2019.pr.Logan Citation Details
Pearson III, Richard L. and Logan, Savannah L. and Adams, Wendy K. "Faculty perception insights obtained from faculty interviews during the development of the Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession in Higher Education (PTaP.HE) instrument" 2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2020.pr.Pearson_III Citation Details

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

Get the Facts Out: Changing the Conversation Around STEM Teacher Recruitment (GFO) is a partnership of the Colorado School of Mines and four national societies: the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. This project aimed to 1. change perceptions of the teaching profession among faculty, teachers, students, and parents, 2. increase the frequency of faculty engaging in practices in the Get the Facts Out toolkit, and 3. increase the number of math, chemistry, and physics majors who enroll in a certification program.

Intellectual Merit: GFO studied both faculty and student perceptions of the teaching profession and has identified key misperceptions of each group. To combat these misperceptions resources and strategies were developed for faculty use, which have been shown to be highly effective with a range of populations of students and faculty across the nation. A Community of GFO Champions has been built and continues to thrive after funding. Over half of GFO Users have indicated increases in interest and enrollment in their institution’s teacher certification program due to use of GFO resources. 

Broader Impacts: Increasing the number of and diversity of highly qualified math, physics and chemistry secondary teachers helps ensure excellence in STEM education for tens of thousands of secondary students across the nation each year, better preparing them to pursue STEM degrees and persist as STEM undergraduates. The GFO Community now includes ~380 registered Champions from over 250 separate institutions with over 13,000 downloads from the GFO website indicating that the registered Champions represent only a fraction of those who use the GFO resources in their work to recruit and retain prospective STEM teachers; 29 publications, both student- and faculty-facing survey instruments; a range of reports detailing research findings housed on the GFO website; and a suite of 700 resources hosted on GettheFactsOut.org were produced under this award. 


 

 


Last Modified: 10/27/2024
Modified by: Wendy K Adams

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