Helping Provisionally Licensed Middle School Science Teachers

Authors

J. J. Matkins, College of William and Mary
D. R. Sterling, George Mason University
A. Kitsantas, George Mason University

Publication Date

2004

Abstract

The New Science Teachers' Support Network is a National Science Foundation-funded project that provides a multifaceted support system to provisionally licensed middle and high school science teachers.The teachers in this project were all hired to teach science, and had science degrees, but had little or no education coursework or background. Research is being conducted on the effectiveness of the support system we employed for these teachers, particularly on the factors that characterize the practice of new teachers, and on factors that lead to teacher success and teacher retention. In this paper, we describe the design of the study and the results from the one-year pilot study. We focus upon our observations and experiences with the middle school teachers in the group of participants; and, we close with preliminary recommendations for supporting provisionally licensed science teachers so they have the best chance of being successful and staying in the teaching profession.

Volume

7

Issue

1

First Page

97

Last Page

108

Rights

© Virginia Mathematics and Science Coalition, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25891/RK1D-ER21

Recommended Citation

Matkins, J. J.; Sterling, D. R.; and Kitsantas, A. (2004) "Helping Provisionally Licensed Middle School Science Teachers," Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations: Vol. 7: No. 1, Article 15.
Available at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jmsce_vamsc/vol7/iss1/15