Training and retaining maths and science teachers in technology centres. A Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship

Transcription

1 Training and retaining maths and science teachers in technology centres A Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship Tom Mason Fellow of

2 Contents Page 1. Introduction 3 Purpose of this fellowship Areas to visit: Research Questions 2. Outline Itinerary 3 3. California 4 STEM Teacher Demographics Silicon Valley and the High Tech Economy Solutions Seen 4. Massachusetts 7 STEM Teacher Demographics Massachusetts High Tech Industry Solutions Seen 5. Tokyo 9 Different Challenges A High Status Profession Need for Professional Development 7. Key findings 12 Importance of incentives Status counts STEM skills must be connected to the real world Partnerships not competition Developing the STEM pipeline 8. Next Steps 13 2

3 1. Introduction Purpose of this fellowship To understand how to recruit, train, and retain, good Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) teachers in areas where a high concentration of well-paying private sector science & technology jobs makes teaching an uncompetitive career choice. And to understand how to engage science teachers in long-term professional training and development in environments where they may see teaching less as a career and more as a stop gap before they move into the higher-paying private sector. Areas to visit: California, USA; Massachusetts, USA; Tokyo, Japan. Research Questions What are the demographics of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) teachers in these locations? What are the problems associated with recruiting, training, and retaining these STEM teachers? Does the presence of large numbers of high tech companies /research universities in these areas make it more difficult to recruit people into the STEM teaching profession. What innovative solutions have been, or are being, developed to tackle these problems? 2. Outline Itinerary Aug-Sept 2008 Desk Research 4-18 October 2008 Silicon Valley, California, USA October 2008 Boston, Massachusetts, USA January 2009 Tokyo, Japan Kansai Science City, Japan 3

4 3. California STEM Teacher Demographics California has the largest teaching workforce in the USA, with over 300,000 teachers educating over 6 million students. Of these, around 40,000 are teaching STEM subjects. In 2005 California had 22,500 maths and 17,500 science teachers in its public schools. Around 2,500 newly qualified STEM teachers join the profession each year. However, at middle school level, 9% of math and 8% of science teachers are underprepared, meaning that they do not hold the correct credentials for the subjects that they teach. At the high school level, 12% of math and 9% of science teachers are also underprepared. Newly hired math and science teachers are even less likely to hold full credentials. Research in 2006 estimates that only 34% of the math teachers and 46% of the science teachers hired in at the secondary level held proper STEM teaching credentials. These figures mean that in California STEM teachers are more likely to be underprepared than teachers in other subjects. This puts the state in the difficult position of having to tackle both the quantity of its STEM teachers, and also their quality. Various factors also mean that shortage is likely to get worse. Although enrolment has levelled off in recent years, student numbers have risen almost twice as quickly in California as in the USA as a whole. Pupil numbers increased over 40% in California between 1987 and 2005, compared to only 20% nationally. This increase in the pupil population looks likely to continue, and puts great strain on the Californian schools system. In addition, around a third of California s STEM teachers are aged over 50 and can be expected to retire within a decade creating a retirement bubble requiring around 13,200 new STEM teachers over the next ten years to cover retirements alone. Research from the U.S. Department of Education also found that math and science teachers are significantly more likely than other teachers to leave the classroom in order to pursue a different career. This is particularly the case in California due to the booming local high tech industry. Silicon Valley and the High Tech Economy Science and technology are central to California s economy. The state exported $41.8 billion in computer and electronics products in 2005, according to the California Legislative Analyst s Office (LAO). This represented about 36% of all exports in California that year. California also has more high technology business establishments than any other U.S. state by a wide margin, with about 14% of the national total. STEM skills are required to support these high tech businesses, putting the teaching profession in direct competition with a large and growing section of the state s economy for STEM-qualified employees. These fast-growing jobs also draw new families to California, compounding the increase in pupil numbers described above. 4

5 Some of the fastest growing jobs in the high tech sector require similar qualification levels to teaching, but can offer much higher salaries. The table below shows the Employment Development Department s predicted fastest growing jobs for the next decade, with average salaries and qualification levels. It shows that those with a BA/BSc in STEM subjects could use their qualification to earn significantly more outside the teaching profession than in it. Fast-growing Jobs Average Annual Wage, 2006 Typical Education & Training Levels Required Teaching Teachers $59,825 BA/BSc Degree + Professional Credentialing Medical/Health Care Jobs Physician Assistants $80,960 BA/BSc Degree Medical Scientists $78,790 PhD Registered Nurses $75,130 AA Degree (2 yr Associates degree) Dental Hygienists $73,950 AA Degree Computer Technology Jobs Computer and Information Systems $120,600 BA/BSc Degree + Experience Managers Computer Software Engineers, Systems $96,070 BA/BSc Degree Software Computer Software Engineers, $91,590 BA/BSc Degree Applications Database Administrators $74,150 BA/BSc Degree In many areas, such as silicon valley, anecdotal evidence from my trip told me that these higher private sector salaries price many would-be teachers out of the area leaving many good potential teachers unable to pursue their career due to financial pressures. Some school districts facing critical shortages of math and science teachers have offered stipends or bonuses on top of regular pay to recruit and retain these teachers, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, but the powerful teaching unions seem heavily opposed to making any such pay differentials official policy. This combination of factors has created huge problem for STEM teaching in California. The California Council on Science and Technology and the Centre for the Future of Teaching and Learning predict the state s schools will need 33,000 new STEM teachers over the next decade to fill the recruitment gap. Solutions Seen I spoke to government, academic, and industry figures to understand some of the strategies being adopted to overcome this shortfall. As perhaps to be expected, with California having some of the most acute problems I had come across, it had also developed some of the most innovative solutions. 5

6 The California Department of Education (DOE) and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) are the government agencies responsible for STEM teaching in the state. Both seemed very keen to tackle the shortage, but budgets were very tight and options sometimes limited. Offering financial incentives was one strategy used to attract more math and science teachers and overcome some of the financial barriers they faced. The Assumption Program of Loans for Education (APLE) repays up to $19,000 of new STEM teachers student loans over four years. This incentive was a significant attraction for many of the trainee teachers I spoke to. The state government also provided funds to California s public universities to improve STEM teacher recruitment. The University of California (UC) has developed a programme to quadruple by 2010 the number of STEM teachers it trains each year. It proposes to do this by developing its teacher recruitment and support centres, and by allowing STEM undergraduates to view classrooms and participate in teaching seminars. California State University (CSU) also developed a programme to double the number of STEM teachers it trains each year by developing new credential pathways to reach out to both undergraduates and math and science professionals, and aligning its programmes with local community colleges to draw from a wider recruitment pool. If UC and CSU are successful, they will produce an additional 1,500 math and science teachers each year over the following 10 years. Private universities are also developing their recruitment centres and financial incentives with Stanford University providing a wide range of endowments and scholarships for trainee STEM teachers, and San Jose State University developing a sophisticated programme to promote teaching to STEM undergraduates, and mentor them through the training process. This is not just an issue for the profession itself however. The high tech industry recognises that it is critical to its survival to maintain a strong supply of STEM-qualified school and college leavers, and the importance of the teaching workforce in passing on those skills. Industry bodies have therefore been developing solutions of their own. The most interesting industry programme I came across in California was the Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education (IISME) Summer Fellowship Program, which provides Silicon Valley STEM teachers with mentored, paid summer internships in industry, university laboratories and government agencies. IISME then assists participating teachers to translate their summer experiences into updated and enriched classroom materials and curriculum. This is achieved through meetings, peer coaching, resource sharing, small grants, and an electronic network to facilitate knowledge sharing. Started in 1985, this programme has provided placements for over 2,500 teachers and research shows that its alumni leave the profession at a quarter of the rate of non-participants (2% attrition rate for IISME alumni vs 8% for STEM teachers state-wide). Over a third of participants rated their summer fellowship as the best professional development they had ever received, and it is something similar to this programme that I am most keen to develop in the UK. 6

7 4. Massachusetts STEM Teacher Demographics The position in Massachusetts seemed similar to that in California, but possibly less acute due to the slightly smaller high tech industry and lower rate of population mobility. It was difficult to get much demographic data as very little centrally collected but I was able to build up a reasonable picture of the state s STEM recruitment challenges. There are around 7,000 maths and 7,000 science teachers in Massachusetts. As all recruitment is local and little data is held centrally it was difficult to determine how significant a shortfall in teacher numbers this represents. My discussions with schools and with the Massachusetts Department of Education gave me at least anecdotal evidence that recruitment problems exist in most school districts, with chemistry and physics teachers being the most difficult to recruit, and with these subjects often being covered by teachers with other science specialisms such as biology. Also like California, Massachusetts seems to face a retirement bubble, with many STEM teachers due to retire in the next five years. There was also evidence that teaching faced something of an image problem, with STEM undergraduates seeing it as being a less desirable and less well paid career than one in industry or academia. Massachusetts High Tech Industry As in California, STEM-related industries make up a large chunk of the Massachusetts economy. about 13 percent of the state s jobs and one-third of its gross state product are related to STEM. Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development projects faster-than-average job growth for what it identifies as the state s four core STEM occupational groups over the next decade, with 30 percent of the state s total employment growth in the next decade coming from just these four groups. The table below shows this projected growth in STEM jobs. Occupation Growth rate Healthcare practitioners & technical 17.5% Computer & mathematical 25.9% Life, physical, & social sciences 15.6% Architecture & engineering 9.5% Average growth rate - STEM occupations 18.1% Average growth rate - all occupations (inc non-stem) 7.8% Solutions Seen As in California I found several innovative responses to the recruitment challenge, but just as data on the teaching profession is not centrally controlled in Massachusetts, neither are the responses. The approach in Massachusetts was more localised and piecemeal, with individual organisations pursuing projects without a state government agency coordinating or providing significant funds. 7

8 State government intervention was largely limited to some small financial incentives and a programme of managed professional development, where all STEM teachers were required to complete 120 points of professional development activities in order to achieve a five-yearly renewal of their teaching qualification. When I visited, plans were also in place to introduce a much more detailed and centrally controlled STEM teacher training programme, with the State Department of Education specifying in detail the subject knowledge that STEM teachers were expected to have. Interestingly, this was an approach tried in the UK in the early days of my organisation, and it was found to have a restricting effect on innovation by teacher training providers and was eventually reversed in favour of a process that encouraged greater innovation. I talked these issues through with the Dept of Education and identified a few areas where they might be able to learn from our experiences. Massachusetts has a programme similar to California s IISME: Leadership Initiatives for Teaching and Technology (LIFT2). LIFT2 offers middle school and high school STEM teachers a research-based professional learning program that integrates graduate coursework with externships in Massachusetts high tech companies. Evaluation of this programme is not as detailed as that available for IISME, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is effective and popular. Most initiatives were however locally led and quite diverse. I found numerous examples of individual schools promoting themselves as specialist STEM high schools and developing their own programmes to recruit and develop their teachers. An excellent example was Worcester County, whose schools encouraged new STEM teachers to develop innovative elective courses for students based on their own specialisms. This helped the teachers to get more involved in the life of the school, thereby reducing turnover, and also drew more pupils into STEM through exciting elective courses in subjects such as robotics and forensic science. I spent a significant part of my visit studying one STEM specialist school in particular the Advanced Math and Science Academy. This school is based in Marlborough in the high tech belt around Interstate Route 495 and has been building links with local companies such as Intel, Raytheon, and HP to provide a very high standard of STEM education in the area. The school had become very skilled at integrating science into the whole curriculum and sharing subject knowledge between teachers. This school provided a model of science education that I am keen to help develop in the UK. Another successful local initiative is the annual Massachusetts STEM Summit organised by the University of Massachusetts. This event brings together academics, policy makers, and schools to increase the number of highly-qualified teachers in STEM and provide them with timely professional development programs and support. I timed my visit so that I could attend the 2008 summit. This provided me with much useful information on school level initiatives, and also allowed me to share my experiences from the UK. I also followed the 2009 summit online from the UK, and will be using this event annually as a source of ideas and shared dialogue in the future. 8

9 5. Tokyo Different Challenges After discussions with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) and the Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST) I have come to the conclusion that while my hypothesis of teacher shortages was correct in the USA, it was not correct in Japan. Japan faces several significant challenges in STEM teaching, but recruitment and retention are not currently pressing issues. The high tech industry is healthy in Tokyo, but this does not seem to have caused a teacher shortage as it has in the UK and US. The structure of the Japanese teaching profession and wider economy seem to have reduced the incentive for STEM graduates to enter industry, and instead have made teaching a more desirable option for many graduates. So successful is STEM teacher recruitment that in 1997 the Japanese government reduced the number of maths teacher training places in state universities by 5,000 (about 30%). This was an unexpected finding for me, so I was keen to use my visit to explore how this had happened. A High Status Profession I found from my discussions that Tokyo s success in recruiting and retaining teachers is mainly attributable to three things: the high social status of the teaching profession; the relatively attractive pay and conditions; and uncertainty in the wider Japanese economy. Historically, Japanese teachers have had a role that is much wider than that of a subject specialist teacher as we might understand them in the UK or US. When Japanese modernisation began in the late 19 th century, teachers were expected to educate children in a new moral and social curriculum of the developing nation. Three dispositions: obedience, trust, and dignity, became fundamental to the teaching profession and teachers were assigned the mission of developing these qualities among their students. This moral education was gradually given a greater priority than academic training and the measure of teachers quality became not their academic knowledge but their moral virtue. The role of the teacher as a carrier and mediator of knowledge became secondary to their role as moral guide. Even as late as 1988 the Educational Personnel Certification Act emphasised spiritual attitudes such as humanity and sense of mission at the expense of subject mastery and the possession of academic knowledge. This moral role gave teachers a high social status in Japan and made the profession much more desirable than its lower-status counterparts in the west. Teachers salaries did not however match this heightened social status until the 1970s, when powerful teaching unions and a growing technology economy increased the demand for STEM teachers. The 1974 Law for Securing Capable Educational Personnel awarded teachers higher salaries than other public servants and helped secure for them attractive employment conditions. This principle has continued as the Japanese government continues to secure high quality teachers by keeping teacher salaries competitive not only with the salaries of other professionals in government but with those in private industry as well. MEXT also confirmed to me that a STEM 9

10 teacher would receive automatic pay and seniority increases each year and had very strong job security. This security and relatively comfortable pay contrasted strongly with the experiences of STEM graduates who went into industry instead. Slow economic growth in the 1990s-2000s and a shift in technology manufacturing from Japan to China and Taiwan made careers in industry less appealing than they had been in the past. Recruits into the high tech industry have complained of job insecurity and high-stress working conditions. Without the higher salaries relative to teaching found in the west, and without the social status of teaching, many STEM graduates saw industry as a less desirable option than teaching. These three factors make teacher recruitment in Tokyo highly competitive and mean that many Japanese high school mathematics teachers are now first tier university graduates who initially trained for careers as mathematicians, physicists or engineers, but have now switched to teaching. Need for Professional Development These same factors have however created the problems that Japanese STEM teaching does now face: sometimes poor academic subject knowledge; lack of practical application of that knowledge; and a structural difficulty in embedding successful teaching practices. The traditional role of teacher as moral guide seems to persist in Tokyo, with subject knowledge being secondary. The views expressed to me suggested that private after school cramming lessons that many pupils attend were used to provide the subject knowledge lacking in the school curriculum, which focused more on teaching pupils how to be Japanese. An international comparative study by CfBT confirms that many incoming primary teachers do not have enough understanding of mathematical concepts to be a specialist in mathematics. Developing their subject knowledge is something that Japanese STEM teachers have identified as being an issue for them. Those surveyed by JST complained that subject based professional development opportunities were very limited, and two thirds said they were too busy even to take up those that were there. MEXT s strategy to develop subject knowledge includes projects to provide high quality subject based materials for STEM teachers to use. It s glossy magazine Science Window provides lesson plans and explanations of themed scientific topics. Two copies go to each school every month. JST provides guest teachers who are experts in particular STEM fields a project that evaluation suggests has improved interest in, and knowledge of, science in both pupils and teachers. 10

11 Cover and sample lesson materials from Science Window STEM teachers also complained that there was not always a clear link between the subject knowledge they did have and it s practical application in the classroom. The practical element of teacher training is quite limited - five weeks of classroom experience for primary and lower secondary school trainee teachers, and only three weeks for upper secondary school trainees. Classroom science experiments were also said to be rare, often due to lack of preparation time in the teacher s timetable. A flagship project by JST to tackle this issue is the development of Super Science High Schools. These schools (102 so far) work in partnership with universities and industry to provide hands-on learning experiences and more opportunities for experimentation. They also develop teaching materials based on the latest scientific research and provide opportunities for STEM teachers to network and share their resources. Compounding this problem is the centrally controlled teacher employment system in Japan. Teachers and head teachers generally have little say over where they are employed and are often rotated through postings in different areas every few years. This means that when good practice is developed, it is difficult to embed as the people responsible often move on shortly afterwards. Many of those I spoke to in Tokyo seemed to understand that curriculum reform, both in schools and in teacher training, was vital if effective STEM teaching was to take place. Several of the initiatives described above have begun to tackle these issues and I will keep a close eye on them for lessons we can learn in the UK. 11

12 7. Key findings Importance of incentives In all three locations, as well as in the UK, the use of financial incentives has been a key factor in the success of STEM recruitment activities. This includes loan repayment and scholarships, paid internships, or keeping salaries competitive with industry. In the UK and US the salary gap between teaching and industry for STEM graduates is large and unavoidable, as is the incentive provided by high Japanese teaching salaries. This research has convinced me that any efforts to recruit significant new STEM teachers into the profession must reflect economic reality and aim to make teaching more financially comparable with the alternative careers open to STEM graduates. Status counts Comparing the social status of teachers in the US and Japan was eye-opening. The high status enjoyed by teachers in Japan made recruitment easy, and attracted high calibre candidates. The much lower status in the US made teaching a career of last resort for many candidates and made recruiting the best STEM graduates challenging. STEM skills must be connected to the real world The lack of connection between academic knowledge and practice in Japanese teaching has been rightly identified by them as a barrier to good STEM teaching. It can also be a barrier to good teacher retention too. The IISME and LIFT2 programmes in the US, and the elective science modules developed by teachers in Worcester County, showed that linking schools to industry was a great way to improve not only their teaching skills but also their commitment and feeling of connection to the profession. The drastically reduced attrition rates for IISME participants are testimony to this. Partnerships not competition I have often heard that the teaching profession is in completion with industry to recruit the best and brightest STEM graduates; this is true, but only in part. The high tech industries in California and Massachusetts recognise that their survival depends being able to recruit people with high levels of STEM skills from the general workforce, and that the best way to ensure a supply of such people is to help improve STEM teaching in schools. Lasting partnerships like IISME allow industry and the profession to tackle the STEM crisis together and mutually benefit. 12

13 Developing the STEM pipeline Related to the point above, everywhere I went people told me how critical it was to develop STEM skills and qualifications in the school population as a whole in order to build up a bigger recruitment pool. High level STEM skills are not common in the workforce and many pupils have disengaged from STEM education early in their school careers. By making STEM more exciting and relevant to all school pupils, as the Advance Science and Math Academy does, it is possible to increase the numbers going on to study STEM subjects at university, and then to become potential recruits back into teaching. Making STEM recruitment more efficient is then only one side of the coin. Policies should look at improving both sides recruiting from the STEM pool more efficiently, but also working to make the pool bigger in the first place. 8. Next Steps This trip has been extremely fruitful for me and I have already begun some follow up work with people I met during my fellowship. I am continuing to participate in the Massachusetts STEM summit, and am closely following the professional development models being developed in Japan. The project that I am most keen on moving forward however is collaboration with IISME to see if we can develop a similar programme in the UK. What I saw there was extremely impressive and seems directly relevant to the problems we are trying to solve in the UK. I am therefore currently looking at how such a programme might work in practice, and talking to colleagues here to make it a reality. I will of course keep the trust updated on my progress! 13