Who Is Interested in Teacher Certification?

• In Event: Using a Quantitative Lens to Examine Teaching in Diverse Communities and Contexts

Abstract

University-based teacher education programs are a key lever to diversify the teacher workforce. Despite knowing that teacher education students are overwhelmingly White and female, there is little work examining the pathway into teacher education. Using the universe of applications for freshmen admissions from 2009-2020 to a large public land-grant university, we examine the relationship between applicant characteristics and two distinct measures of intent to pursue teacher certification. We find that the pool of applicants with at least some interest in teaching is substantially more diverse in terms of race/ethnicity and gender than those who actually take steps to pursue teaching certification, suggesting that teacher education programs should focus on recruitment efforts among underrepresented students early in their college career.

Authors

• Brendan Bartanen, University of Virginia

• Andrew Kwok, Texas A&M University - College Station