Full Title: Exploring Elementary Teachers’ Feelings, Beliefs and Effectiveness across Mathematics, Science and Literacy

Investigative Team: Dr. Leigh McLean (PI; Arizona State University), Dr. Richard Fabes (co-PI; Arizona State University), Dr. Sarah Lindstrom Johnson (co-I; Arizona State University), Dr. Kevin Grimm (co-I; Arizona State University), Dr. Erik Ruzek (co-I; NWEA)

Sponsor: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences

Program: Education Research Grants; Effective Teachers and Effective Teaching Topic, Goal 1

Amount: $1,400,000

Timeline: July 2018 to June 2024 (6 years; timeline extended due to COVID)

Summary: The teacher plays an important role in students’ academic development as they are responsible for making decisions that largely determine students’ experiences and learning outcomes. In the typical elementary classroom the teacher is responsible for applying instruction across the core content areas of math, science, and literacy regardless of their relative comfort with each. Unfortunately, teachers (especially teachers of young students) report marked discomfort in math and science, with negative implications for student learning. In Project TEAS, we explore the relations between fourth-grade teachers’ content area-specific feelings/beliefs and their students’ resulting achievement across math, science and literacy, and key mechanisms through which these relations may operate.

Project Aims:

1. Examine the direct connections between teachers’ initial content area-specific feelings/beliefs and students’ end-of-year achievement across math, science, and literacy, both within and across content areas.

2. Within each content area, investigate the extent to which the above direct relations are mediated by students’ mid-year content area-specific feelings and learning behaviors and teachers’ mid-year instructional practices, including sensitivity analyses to test the hypothesized directionality of relations between student, teacher, and instructional variables.

3. Within each content area, explore the potential moderating effects of student characteristics on the proposed relations between initial teacher feelings/beliefs and mid-year student feelings and learning behaviors, and of teacher characteristics on the proposed relations between initial teacher feelings/beliefs and their mid-year instructional practices.

Full Title: The Impacts of Preservice Supervised Field Experiences on Elementary Mathematics Teachers’ Retention and Effectiveness

Investigative Team: Dr. Leigh McLean (PI; Arizona State University), Dr. Peter Youngs (co-PI; University of Virginia), Dr. Nathan Jones (co-PI; Boston University), & Dr. Ben Kelcey (co-PI; University of Cincinnati Ohio)

Sponsor: National Science Foundation

Program: EHR Core Research Program, Track 1/Level 2

Amount: $1,500,000

Timeline: July 2021 to June 2024 (3 years)

Summary: There is emerging evidence that teaching candidates’ supervised field experiences have implications for later student learning. However, there is still much to be clarified about how these field experiences impact both student achievement and important teacher outcomes, and the mechanisms through which these relations operate. Teaching candidates rapidly develop their teaching knowledge and skills during pre-service preparation; thus, our understanding of how specific experiences during this stage contribute to this development is a critical policy lever that has, to date, been underexplored. In TP2C, we are following 1,200 teaching candidates from multiple teacher training programs from the last year of teacher preparation through the end of their second year of teaching. We are connecting participants’ experiences in supervised field experiences to critical student and teacher outcomes, including students’ mathematics achievement, attendance, and behavior; and teachers’ career retention.

Project Aims:

1. Explore the extent to which participants’ pre-service supervised field experiences influence their retention, and their students’ mathematics, behavior, and attendance outcomes in the first two years of teaching.

2. Explore the extent to which teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching and mathematics teaching self-efficacy mediate the direct relations examined in Aim 1.

3. Explore the additional contributions of observed mathematics teaching practices in these proposed mediating relations among a subsample of participants.

4. Explore the potential moderating effects of individuals’ well-being and adaptive characteristics.