Novice Elementary Teachers Research Articles

Novice Elementary Teachers’ Science Teaching: Instructional Planning and Discourse

ABSTRACT Teaching science to elementary school students is complex, and teacher preparation programs must support pre-service teachers’ learning to communicate science content and practices with children. Science teachers bring the experiences they have as students to their teacher preparation, and these experiences may support or conflict with what they are learning about effective teaching. In this study, we present stories of two first-year teachers who attended a STEM-focused teacher preparation program in the U.S. While effective science teaching requires a multitude of complex practices, we focus on the teachers’ science lesson planning and discourse. These two constructs were chosen as areas of foci because they are introduced in teacher preparation, preservice teachers are often evaluated on these constructs in preparation for licensure, and they are critical components of effective elementary instruction/ Data collection began during their teacher preparation and continued into their first year as teachers and include semi-structured interviews, observation field notes, and video recordings. While both teachers expressed similar intentions for incorporating instruction practices learned in their teacher preparation, we found differences in enactment. We discuss influences, such as school cultures and peers, on beginning teachers’ attempts to translate learning from teacher preparation into their first year as teachers of science and include recommendations for continued support of novice teacher learning.

Novice Elementary Teachers' Probabilistic and Statistical Reasoning: Addressing Misconceptions

Novice Elementary Teachers' Probabilistic and Statistical Reasoning: Addressing Misconceptions

Novice elementary teachers’ pedagogical journey in far-flung schools in the time of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract This study was conducted to explore the experiences of novice elementary teachers assigned in far-flung schools in the time of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, anchoring on reflective practice using Kolb’s (2015) experiential learning theory. As a strategy to understand the experiences of novice teachers, the researcher employed mini-virtual ethnography by interviewing four novice elementary teachers teaching in schools located in mountainous areas. The data gathered were analysed using thematic analysis. Recorded interviews were transcribed, coded and sorted to identify the different themes. The study revealed that teachers experienced challenging and fulfilling encounters on their journey. To cope with the challenges brought by the pandemic, the teachers found means to ensure that education continued amidst the crisis, with the help of various stakeholders. Out of their experiences, teachers gained a lot of realisations and aspirations for their students, parents and self. They have seen that what they went through will help them become stronger, and there is still hope despite what is happening. By engaging in reflective practice, teachers were able to think and reflect on their experiences, learn from the experience, plan for a change and improve their learning and instructional practices.

Engagement in high‐leverage science teaching practices among novice elementary teachers

AbstractAs part of learning to teach, teachers must learn to use a range of teaching practices. In this longitudinal study the authors explore how novice elementary teachers learn to engage in a set of high‐leverage science teaching practices, such asleading a science sensemaking discussionandsetting up and managing small‐group investigations. Drawing primarily on videorecords from 33 lesson enactments, supplemented by transcripts of interviews with the participants, the authors follow five participants from their second year of a teacher education program through their first year of teaching. Findings suggest that high‐leverage science teaching practices can be untangled from one another and that teachers mostly demonstrated some important strengths in the dimensions of the practices. Furthermore, the teachers were able to use the practices synergistically, though in different ways, toward their goal of supporting students' sensemaking. The findings also suggest that teachers' engagement in the practices varied considerably as a function of lesson and school context. The findings have implications for the design of practice‐based teacher education experiences and for scholarship on teacher development.

Developmental trajectories for novice teachers: teaching efficacy, instructional beliefs, and domain knowledge

ABSTRACT The current study investigates the developmental trajectories of novice elementary teachers’ self-efficacy science beliefs, their science instructional beliefs and science knowledge over the course of participants’ teacher preparation and into their first two years of teaching. Study results indicate changes in teachers’ self-efficacy science beliefs, in their science instructional beliefs, and changes in science knowledge. Additionally, teachers’ growth in science content knowledge had an impact on teachers’ self-efficacy science beliefs and on teachers’ instructional science beliefs. Findings from our study can help teacher educators, researchers, and policy makers in better understanding novice elementary teachers’ science developmental trajectories and the role of knowledge and beliefs in their professional growth.

Stories Stories of Prevailing: Novice Teachers’ Journey in Far-flung Schools in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic

This study was conducted to explore the experiences of novice teachers assigned in far-flung schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, anchoring on reflective practice guided by David Kolb's experiential learning theory. As a strategy to understand the experiences of novice teachers, the researcher employed mini-virtual ethnography by interviewing four novice elementary teachers teaching in schools located in mountainous areas through phone calls and messenger chat. The data gathered were analyzed using thematic analysis. Recorded interviews were transcribed, coded, and sorted to identify the different themes. The study revealed that teachers experienced challenging and fulfilling encounters on their journey. To cope with the challenges brought by the pandemic, the teachers find means to ensure that education continues amidst the crisis with the help of various stakeholders. Out of their experiences, teachers have gained a lot of realizations and aspirations for their students, parents, and self. They've seen that what they went through will help them become stronger, and there is still hope despite what is happening. By engaging in reflective practice, using Kolb's learning cycle, teachers could think and reflect on their experiences, learn from the experience, plan for a change, and improve their learning and instructional practices

Science practice‐readiness: Novice elementary teachers' developing knowledge of science practices

AbstractWith the shifts in science education emphasizing the integration of science practices with science content, there is a need to know how teachers understand those science practices within their teaching practice. Our primary research question was, What do novice elementary teachers know about the science practices, in terms of what the practices are and how to engage students in the science practices? To answer that question, the current qualitative case study investigated how three novice elementary teachers' knowledge of the science practices is evident in their teaching practice across 4 years: 2 years in a practice‐based teacher education program and 2 years teaching. Data sources included videorecords of the teachers' science instruction, lesson plans, reflections, and interviews. The findings indicate that the novice elementary teachers' knowledge of the science practices and how to teach them varied, with their understanding of how to teach some science practices more evident than their knowledge of the nuances of the practices themselves. Across all of the science practices, they demonstrated a strong understanding that students should be the ones engaging in the intellectual work of the science practices, and not the teacher. As novice elementary teachers learn how to teach science, they may develop their science practice‐readiness, which can serve as a building block for understanding the science practices in greater depth with more teaching experience. The current study has implications for teacher educators when developing opportunities to support novices' understanding of the science practices in ways that can expand with more teaching experience.

Novice elementary teachers’ knowledge of, beliefs about, and planning for the science practices: a longitudinal study

ABSTRACT This longitudinal research examines the knowledge of, beliefs about, and planned use of the science practices of five novice elementary or primary teachers during their science methods course, student teaching, and first year of teaching. To answer our research questions, we collected lesson plans and conducted interviews after the teachers taught science lessons, and we coded these data sources for science practices and sub-practices. We found that the novice elementary teachers assumed a wide range of purposes for using the science practices in their classroom. For example, they emphasised the practices’ cross-curricular nature as well as how the practices can engage students in real science. In reference to the use of the science practices in their plans, there were aspects of the practices where the novice teachers’ planned practice did not yet match their understanding or beliefs. For instance, the novice teachers knew that reasoning is a part of science explanations, but there was little evidence of this element of Explanation and Argumentation in their plans. This work adds to the field's understanding of how novice elementary teachers use multiple science practices in planning to engage their students in sensemaking, and has implications for elementary science teacher education.

Effectively Managing Classroom: A Case Study of Four Novice Elementary Teachers in Private Schools

This study explored the lived experiences of novice elementary school teachers with respect to classroom management. This study used a phenomenological case study research design. Four novice elementary school teachers struggling with classroom management were selected from private elementary schools in Lahore. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit the lived experiences of the participants. All interviews were audio-recorded and later transcribed for conducting a qualitative content analysis of the data. The analysis revealed that novice teachers faced various challenges in managing their class�and used multiple pedagogical techniques to handle day-to-day classroom issues. Usually, a new teacher is highly dependent on the support and help from the school management; irony, however, is that they seldom receive any. This study contributes to contextual knowledge related to the issues and needs of novice private elementary school teachers at the start of their careers.

Developmental Trajectories for Novice Elementary Teachers: Teaching Efficacy and Mathematics Knowledge

This study investigated developmental trajectories of novice elementary teachers’ efficacy beliefs (i.e., personal teaching efficacy and outcome expectancy) and their mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT). Overall, study findings indicated growth in participants’ personal efficacy beliefs and in various assessments for dimensions of MKT. Additional relationships between participants’ MKT trajectories and their mathematics efficacy beliefs trajectories were found. Findings from our study can help teacher educators, researchers, and school leaders in better understanding how novice teachers develop their MKT and their teaching efficacy beliefs during the teacher education program and in their first years of teaching.

Moving beyond induction and mentoring: The influence of networks on novice teacher experiences

ABSTRACT In this research, I investigated the social support networks of four novice elementary teachers. Data were obtained through one-on-one interviews, egocentric social network map creation, and observations. Though the four teachers had varying levels of satisfaction, at the completion of their second year of teaching, all four expressed intent to remain in their positions and the profession. Examination of the four teachers’ social support networks and work contexts suggests that these novice teachers need and value the following supports: emotional, contextual, relational, academic, and social. The types of supports each of the four teachers accessed were functions of the type and locations of the relationships they formed but also reveal the priority the teachers placed on the various supports.

Epistemological framing and novice elementary teachers' approaches to learning and teaching engineering design

AbstractAs engineering learning experiences increasingly begin in elementary school, elementary teacher preparation programs are an important site for the study of teacher development in engineering education. In this article, we argue that the stances that novice teachers adopt toward engineering learning and knowledge are consequential for the opportunities they create for students. We present a comparative case study examining the epistemological framing dynamics of two novice urban teachers, Ana and Ben, as they learned and taught engineering design during a four‐week institute for new elementary teachers. Although the two teachers had very similar teacher preparation backgrounds, they interpreted the purposes of engineering design learning and teaching in meaningfully different ways. During her own engineering sessions, Ana took up the goal not only of meeting the needs of the client but also of making scientific sense of artifacts that might meet those needs. When facilitating students' engineering, she prioritized their building knowledge collaboratively about how things work. By contrast, when Ben worked on his own engineering, he took up the goal of delivering a product. When teaching engineering to students, he offered them constrained prototyping tasks to serve as hands‐on contexts for reviewing scientific explanations. These findings call for teacher educators to support teachers' framing of engineering design as a knowledge building enterprise through explicit conversations about epistemology, apprenticeship in sense‐making strategies, and tasks intentionally designed to encourage reasoning about design artifacts.

Novice Elementary Teachers’ Developing Visions of Effective Science Teaching

Theories of how people learn and how science connects to students’ lives provide frameworks for exploring the development of teachers’ visions of effective science teaching. These frameworks can inform elementary teacher preparation programs about how to communicate theory-based practices of effective science instruction to support pre-service teachers’ abilities to identify and enact science instruction that contributes to student learning. Part of a larger study, the present study uses a grounded theory design to examine three teachers’ developing visions of effective science teaching through their teacher preparation and into their first year of teaching through a series of interviews. Findings revealed several factors contributing to their visions of science teaching: their memories of their experiences as elementary students, their teacher preparation, and institutional policies related to science instruction. Implications for helping novice teachers connect their visions with enacting practices situated in the realities of classrooms are discussed.

Assessing Elementary Teachers' Content Knowledge for Teaching Science for the ETS® Educator Series: Pilot Results

AbstractThe purpose of this report is to examine the performance of assessment items designed to measure elementary teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT) science as part of the ETS® Educator Series. The Elementary Education: CKT Science assessment is 1 component of licensure examination through the PRAXIS® assessments. The Elementary Education: CKT Science assessment is designed to determine whether kindergarten through 6th‐grade elementary teacher candidates have the essential content knowledge needed for teaching elementary science as new teachers at the entry level. This report provides information about the development of the Elementary Education: CKT Science framework and the associated assessment items. The main part of the report focuses on the evidence gathered when piloting 104 CKT science assessment items with 417 preservice and novice elementary teachers. This evidence included the following: (a) how these new CKT science assessment items function, including their item difficulties and discrimination, and reliabilities of the pilot forms and of the classification of examinees; (b) how teachers perceive the importance and relevance of these new assessment items; (c) how teachers' performances on these items relate to their background characteristics and professional and academic preparation; and (d) how teachers' performances on the CKT science items compare to their performances on an assessment designed to measure only their science subject matter knowledge.

Mediating Factors in Literacy Instruction: How Novice Elementary Teachers Navigate New Teaching Contexts

This longitudinal study, framed by activity theory, examines what seven novice teachers’ talk and actions reveal about their literacy teaching practices then delves into mediating influences of the teaching context. Utilizing collective, multi-case methods, data sources included interviews, observations, and artifacts. Findings indicate novices navigated school contexts by following existing practices, adjusting to conditions, and pushing back. Mediating influences, internal and external, were factored how novices applied knowledge from teacher preparation programs. Authors employed the metaphor of paddling a constantly changing river to convey novices’ actions for meeting students’ literacy learning. Recommendations for teacher educators and policymakers are suggested.

Developing Confidence in STEAM: Exploring the Challenges that Novice Elementary Teachers Face

Developing Confidence in STEAM: Exploring the Challenges that Novice Elementary Teachers Face

Using Student Video Cases to Assess Pre-service Elementary Teachers’ Engineering Teaching Responsiveness

Our study addresses the need for new approaches to prepare novice elementary teachers to teach both science and engineering, and for new tools to measure how well those approaches are working. This in particular would inform the teacher educators of the extent to which novice teachers are developing expertise in facilitating their students’ engineering design work. One important dimension to measure is novice teachers’ abilities to notice the substance of student thinking and to respond in productive ways. This teacher noticing is particularly important in science and engineering education, where students’ initial, idiosyncratic ideas and practices influence the likelihood that particular instructional strategies will help them learn. This paper describes evidence of validity and reliability for the Video Case Diagnosis (VCD) task, a new instrument for measuring pre-service elementary teachers’ engineering teaching responsiveness. To complete the VCD, participants view a 6-min video episode of children solving an engineering design problem, describe in writing what they notice about the students’ science ideas and engineering practices, and propose how a teacher could productively respond to the students. The rubric for scoring VCD responses allowed two independent scorers to achieve inter-rater reliability. Content analysis of the video episode, systematic review of literature on science and engineering practices, and solicitation of external expert educator responses establish content validity for VCD. Field test results with three different participant groups who have different levels of engineering education experience offer evidence of construct validity.

“I’ve Tried and I’ve Died This Year”: First-Year Teachers Reflect on Literacy Reform

ABSTRACTThis article describes the challenges associated with outcomes-based education reform as experienced by two novice elementary teachers. Interviews with the teachers provide insights into the tensions between their teaching beliefs and the practices employed in their local contexts. Specifically, pressures to both focus on standardized measures of student achievement and to conform to the social norms of the schools are explored. The authors advocate for the need for situated discussions about these tensions during the first year of teaching and recognition of the complexity of teaching and learning by all stakeholders.

Exploring teacher knowledge and actions supporting technology-enhanced teaching in elementary schools: Two approaches by pre-service teachers

<span>Two approaches to teaching with technology to highlight practice-based teacher knowledge and actions for teaching technologically enhanced lessons are presented. Participants were two elementary pre-service teachers teaching during practicum. Qualitative data sources included verbatim transcripts of participant interviews, field notes of planning and support sessions, and classroom observations. Teacher lesson plans and student work samples triangulated data. Cross case analysis revealed that </span><em>content-centric</em><span> pedagogy - focusing lesson design on a specific content learning outcome, rather than technical skill - promoted student engagement and learning of both content and technical skill. Additionally, some pedagogical knowledge characteristics, reflected in specific teacher actions related to planning and implementation of technology-enhanced lessons, were fundamental across the two subject areas investigated. For novice elementary teachers, explicit communication of generic technology pedagogical knowledge characteristics, supported by concrete examples of teacher actions, may contribute to teachers experiencing a degree of success during their initial attempts at teaching with technology.</span>

Voices From the Classroom: Literacy Beliefs and Practices of Two Novice Elementary Teachers

As political mandates in the United States continue to demand increasing levels of literacy by all young children, the importance of identifying factors that influence novice teachers' development over time become more critical. In this article, we explore Phase I of a longitudinal study, which describes the evolving literacy beliefs and practices of two early childhood teachers as they progress from pre-student teaching through the end of their first year as professional teachers. Interview and observational data indicated that external factors such as teacher preparation and teaching context, as well as dispositions, were key factors across time. As professional teachers, the participants' demonstrated beliefs and practices associated with effective teachers. Their literacy practices reflected their expressed beliefs and broadened over time.