Making Sense of Science Teacher Retention: Teacher Embeddedness and Its Implications for New Teacher Support

• In Event: Noyce Research Results: Addressing Preparation, Effectiveness, and Retention of STEM Teachers in High-Need School Districts

Abstract

Objectives: This study aims to investigate factors influencing novice science teacher retention in the United States to describe what is being done to support novice science teachers across a wide range of school and community environments in places where the retention rate of novice science teachers is demonstrably well above average. We will describe our preliminary findings as well as the conceptual framework of teacher embeddedness, which we have used to make sense of novice science teacher retention. In districts with a track record for retaining novice science teachers, there are stakeholders who know and have learned a great deal about how to support novice science teachers and create conditions for their success, and a core aim of this project is to spread their hard-won practical wisdom to a wider audience.

Theoretical Framework/Rationale: The theory of job embeddedness developed from the field of economics and applied psychology to serve as a better predictor of voluntary employee turnover than theories invoking job satisfaction and job alternatives (Holtom et al., 2006; Kiazad et al., 2015; Mitchell et al., 2001). Holtom et al. (2013) argue that job embeddedness grows over time as an individual makes more connections to both job and place, and therefore the longer one remains at a job the more “stuck” they become, and the harder it is to leave.

Methods: This study has two distinct phases. In the first phase, we used publicly available staffing data from 2007-2018 to construct a 5-year retention map for six cohorts of novice science teachers in each of four U.S. states (New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). In the second phase we identify districts with a high rate of novice science teacher retention—with a focus on high need schools and schools that retain science teachers of color—and conduct case studies to understand why.

Data: This study utilizes state level data, spanning a ten-year period, from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, to identify school districts with exemplary novice science teacher retention, and then conduct site visits and write case studies that describe the characteristics that contribute to the high retention of science teachers in these districts.

Results: The main components of teacher embeddedness are fit, links, and assets, and are applied to two distinct domains: the organization and the community. In the symposium presentation, we will detail examples of each of these framework components from the data collected from case studies that have been completed.

Scholarly Significance: The theory of job embeddedness, adapted specifically for the field of teaching and termed teacher embeddedness here, offers new insights on meaningful supports for novice teachers, and is consistent with our aim to focus on why teachers stay, rather than why they leave (Lee et al., 2014). By learning what factors help create the organizational and community contexts that permit a novice science teacher to remain and grow as a teacher, we hope to strengthen science teaching on a wider scale, and stem the flow of well-qualified individuals out of the profession.

Authors

• Douglas B. Larkin, Montclair State University

• Liz Carletta, Montclair State University

• Suzanne Poole Patzelt, Touro University

• Khadija M. Ahmed, Montclair State University