Repairing the Illinois High School Physics Teacher Pipeline

High School Physics Teacher Recruitment, Preparation and Retention:

The Illinois Model

A report from the ISAAPT Ad Hoc Committee on High School Physics Teacher Recruitment, Preparation and Retention

Illinois Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers

Special Session Meeting and Report

Illinois Central College, East Peoria & Bradley University, Peoria

October 14-16, 2004

(Last updated November 1, 2004)

Reports:

• Executive Summary (updated November 1) A four-page PDF overview of the Full Report.
• Full Report (updated November 1) A detailed 16-page PDF review of all findings, recommendations, and references.

Presenters:

Follow-up Discussion Participants:

Session Agenda (Thursday/Friday, October 14/15)

Session PowerPoint Presentations:

• Status of the Illinois High School Physics Teacher Pipeline, Presented by Carl J. Wenning, Illinois State University. In this presentation Wenning provides a review of the literature in relation to the recruitment, preparation, and retention of physics teachers. He identified national trends and explained how these trends are reflected in the Illinois market place. He provides information about the leaky nature and low flow volume of the physics teacher preparation pipeline within Illinois, and makes a few suggestions about how that pipeline might be repaired.
• Teacher Candidate Perspectives, Presented by Kenneth Mellendorf, Illinois Central College. Mellendorf provides a summary of the findings in relation to those factors that most and least (and even negatively) affected the decisions of teacher candidates to become high school physics teachers.
• In-Service Physics Teacher Survey, Kimberly Shaw, Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville. Shaw provides a review of those teacher practices most closely aligned with the factors that help high school students decide to become physics teachers. She also reviews those factors that make teachers enjoy their jobs, and those which most make them want to leave teaching.
• Teacher Certification and University Program Accreditation, Lynn Steffen, Illinois State University. Steffen provides an overview of the accreditation processes that teacher education programs in Illinois must undergo. She speaks about the relationship of teacher education unit accreditation in relation to the requirements by the National Science Teachers Association for specific teacher preparation programs.
• Alternative Certification Programs, Michael Lorber, Illinois State University. Lorber provides a summary of the nature of ISU's second iteration of the alt. cert. program. He shares the course requirements and notes the nature and extent of this program's impact on the need for teachers of physics.

Survey Data Sets:

• Survey of Physics Teacher Education Candidates This survey and data set were collected by Carl Wenning. He surveyed 24 of 33 declared physics teacher education majors at Illinois State University in an effort to determine which factors most influenced their decisions to become teachers in general an physics teachers in particular.
• Survey of In-Service High School Physics Teacher This survey and data set were also collected by Wenning. In a survey of about 20 teachers, he was able to gain a sense of teaching practices that relate most closely to those factors that appear to influence high school students to become physics teachers. He also attempted to identify what factors teachers most and least enjoyed in relation to their teaching.

Review and Recommendations PowerPoint:

• Teacher Recruitment and Retention Presented by Shaw, Mellendorf, Weber, and Wenning. A "sneak preview" of the two-days session with recommendations from the committee presented at the ISAAPT autumn meeting on Saturday, October 16.