- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1557388
- First Name Behailu
- Last Name Mammo
- Discipline Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Geosciences, Math, Physics
- Co-PI(s)
Dayna Defeo, University of Alaska, djdefeo@alaska.edu
- Presenters
Behailu Mammo, Hofstra University, matbzm@hofstra.edu; Alysha Minaya-Torres, Hofstra University, Jenna Petrungaro, Hofstra University
Need
The project seeks to provide Noyce scholars with tutoring work experience to not only give them income during their teacher education program, but also to help them develop valuable and transferrable skills that will support their transition to teaching. The research questions embedded with the program administration are designed to both inform program management formatively, and to collect data that can make an empirical contribution.
Goals
The research questions are: 1. Do tutoring programs offer opportunities to assess teaching dispositions that are not readily observable in a classroom setting? 2. How do preservice teachers develop self-efficacy and teaching dispositions through tutoring exchanges? This project proposes to explore these questions using a mixed methods research design: primarily qualitative, supplemented and informed by some quantitative data.
Approach
During the two years of the project, researchers and program administrators will conduct observations of the scholars in tutoring exchanges, collect pre-post surveys and reflective essays from scholars, conduct interviews with scholars, and interview faculty. The data will support two analyses. How education faculty regard tutoring exchanges as an opportunity to assess preservice teacher dispositions will be explored using a case study design (Merriam, 1998) of a typical case (Patton, 2002). Crystallization of data sources (Ellingson, 2009) will be achieved through content analysis (Weber, 1990) of faculty observation notes and rubrics and provisional coding (Saldaña, 2015) of faculty interviews around the teacher disposition categories. How preservice teacher-tutors develop self-efficacy and teaching dispositions will be explored using a phenomenological research design (Moustakas, 1994). Change scores on the scholars’ two self-assessments will be analyzed using descriptive statistics, and used to inform and guide researchers’ interviews with scholars. The qualitative analysis will use transcribed interviews with scholars and their reflective essays; the data will be sorted into meaning units (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) and analyzed using open-ended axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1988) in the constant comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Reliability of codes will be assured by employing Burla et al.’s (2008) inter-coder reliability (ICR) assessment, and member-checking with scholars.
Outcomes
We expect that this project will produce two papers for peer review – one for each of the research questions, to be submitted to teacher education journals such as the Journal of Teacher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, or Action in Teacher Education. Additionally, we anticipate sharing the data from the two research questions at two national conference presentations, such as the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education or The Psychology of Math Education, North American Chapter, or the Association of Math Teacher Educators. We anticipate that the two scholars who attend the conference in year two will offer their reflections as a case study, to be synthesized with data and documents from the Noyce Scholar program, to be written as conference proceedings.
Broader Impacts
This project will be starting in the fall, so the information is conceptual at this point in time. However, the project’s anticipated broader impacts are to: 1) improve STEM education in high-need schools by giving 5 preservice teachers a valuable professional development experience, 2) support the student teaching experience for Noyce scholars, a vulnerable period in which teachers frame lasting impressions and attitudes about the profession, and 3) to produce training handbook that could benefit teacher education programs, including pre-service and in-service teachers.
