- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # N/A
- First Name Andrea
- Last Name Beesley
- Registration Faculty/Administrator/Other
- Discipline STEM Education (general)
- Role Other: National evaluator
- Presenters
Andrea Beesley, SRI; Anandita Krishnamachari, SRI
Need
The NSF wants to assess the effectiveness of the Noyce scholarship program in addressing the shortage of K-12 STEM teachers and leaders in high-need school districts. The evaluation will focus on the program’s processes and outcomes over the past decade. Its goal is to determine the role of Noyce scholarships in attracting diverse STEM professionals and undergraduate students to teach in these schools, retaining them, and contributing to knowledge about K-12 STEM teacher preparation, recruitment, retention, and effectiveness. NSF is also seeking to assess the program’s efforts in creating inclusive teaching environments and professional development experiences.
Research Questions
What are the goals of Noyce awards and what activities do teacher preparation programs use to diversify, recruit, select, prepare, empower, and support Noyce recipients? What are the relationships between the types of support, activities, and training that Noyce recipients receive; the types of Noyce recipients; and the recipients’ plans to go into and stay in teaching and leadership roles? What is the impact of Noyce on teacher certification in STEM fields and employment in high-need schools?
Approach
We expect data sources to include award and report documents from grantees, rosters of scholarship recipients with demographic data, certification and employment data from recipients, survey data, and case study data including focus groups and interviews. Descriptive, correlational, and regression analyses will be used with the quantitative data to answer evaluation questions about the program and its scholarship recipients.Key features of our approach to the evaluation include:• The data we collect and the analyses of those data will allow for comparisons across different tracks as well as between subgroups and contexts. Our analyses will look for commonalities and differences regarding findings about goals, metrics, strategies, and impacts. • Comparing subgroups and contexts will be particularly important to understand demographic differences related to equity and access. We will identify patterns and trends in the data over time, as well as across data sources. These features of our approach are also part of how we operationalize data equity practices.• Finally, we propose a meta-analysis of external evaluations and publications to provide quantitative findings about the impact of the program on the teacher workforce.
Outcomes
The evaluation will address questions related to the goals of Noyce awards, supports for recipients, impact on teacher certification and employment in high-need schools, and the connections between support, training, and recipients’ career plans. This evaluation has features of both process and outcome evaluation. Process evaluation focuses on how well program plans and activities are working. In this case, it is about grantee goals and strategies, what is provided by the program to participants, and the challenges and lessons learned. Outcome evaluation focuses on whether the program is effective in meeting its objectives. In this evaluation that includes multiple goals: outcomes for principal investigators and institutions; awardees; effect on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the STEM teacher workforce; and teacher commitment and retention, along with the health and usefulness of networks.
Broader Impacts
The evaluation will help NSF understand the impact and importance of the Noyce Teacher Scholarship program for diversifying and broadening the STEM teacher and education leader workforce in the U.S.
