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1. Mentoring future mathematics teachers: Lessons learned from four mentoring partnerships.

   Hodge, A. (October 2019, Journal of mathematics education at Teachers College)

   Mentoring is an important aspect of mathematics teacher education, and in particular, pre-service teacher education. Faculty at a large Midwestern university developed and refined a mentoring program designed to help pre-service secondary mathematics teachers, called Scholars, become future leaders in mathematics education. This paper describes how faculty mentors leveraged challenges in the mentoring program’s early stages based on their reflections and initial mentee outcomes to create a more effective mentoring program. Recommendations based on research and practice are provided for other university programs interested in mentoring future mathematics teachers. 

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2. The Mentoring Network of K-5 Educators and Engineering Researchers in an RET

   Evans, Gayle N; Crippen, Kent J; Simmons, Chelsey S; Simmons, Renee N. (June 2019, 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Elementary school is the first opportunity most students have to learn about STEM; however, elementary teachers are sometimes the least confident and prepared to teach STEM concepts and practices. Research Experience for Teachers (RET) programs are an established form of K-12 teacher professional development in which teachers are invited to work as members of a laboratory research team to increase their enthusiasm, knowledge and experience in STEM fields. The Engineering for Biology: Multidisciplinary Research Experiences for Teachers (MRET) of Elementary Grades was a 7-week summer program in which teachers were embedded as contributing members of engineering laboratory research teams and was established with the goals of (1) increasing teacher knowledge of STEM concepts and practices, (2) fostering mentoring relationships among researchers and teachers in each laboratory, and (3) guiding the translation of the teachers’ laboratory experience into the classroom through the development of STEM learning units. This exploratory study focuses on the second goal, and involves the use of developmental network theory to discriminate mentoring among participants within the summer 2017 and 2018 cycles of MRET. Using data collected in daily observations as well as daily activity and conversation logs submitted by all participants during the lab experience, post participation surveys, and post program semi structured interviews, we have characterized a network of mentoring that existed within the lab portion of MRET as being multidirectional and potentially beneficial to all members, including researchers as well as teachers. This finding challenges the currently accepted assumption that teachers are the primary beneficiaries of mentoring within RET programs. If demonstrated to be appropriate and transferrable to the RET context, such a perspective could enhance our understanding of the experience and be used for maximizing the outcomes for all participants. 

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3. Mentoring in the midst of teachHOUSTON: The Pandemic Chapter

   Craig, C.; Evans, P.; Stokes, D.; McAlister Shields, L.; Curtis, G.; Manuel, M. (April 2021, Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)

   This paper is the third in a series of three manuscripts under review and in press that have to do with mentoring in the midst of teachHOUSTON, an innovative urban Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) teacher education program, which was developed to better meet the needs of underserved secondary students who mostly are of color. teachHOUSTON has been funded by several National Science Foundation (NSF) scholarship-awarding grants that additionally support program development. Each grant award has brought different iterations of mentoring to the surface, all of which are complementary. Our first paper (under review) demonstrates the multi-layered mentoring that takes place within the teachHOUSTON program. Our second manuscript, an in press chapter, focuses on generative mentoring; that is, the way that mentoring shoots out in all directions, with some of it being by teachHOUSTON design and other parts unspooling organically. In this paper, we dig more deeply into the relationships that developed and the interests shared between and among faculty, teachHOUSTONstudents (some being preservice teachers), teachers who are graduates of the program (teachHOUSTONalumni) and secondary school students who are the ultimate beneficiaries of the urban teacher education effort. This third mentoring paper is the “pandemic chapter” of the four-year study. Meetings, interviews and focus groups conducted on Zoom allowed us to map intricate connections between and among individuals participating in two grant programs: UH-LIFE and LEAD HOUSTON. In this work, we conceptualize chain mentoring as the formal and informal ways mentoring played out during the global pandemic in Houston, the fourth largest urban center in the U.S., which is the site where this narrative inquiry research took place. 

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4. Job Embeddedness and Professional Support: A Case Study of Science Teacher Retention in One District

   Larkin, Douglas. B.; Carletta, Liz; Patzelt, Suzanne. P.; & Ahmed, Khadija. (September 2021, NARST Annual Meeting (Virtual))

   This paper theorizes teacher retention using the framework of job-embeddedness, and analyzes the case of a school district in New Jersey where science teachers have been retained at a much higher rate than most other school districts in the state during the focus period of the study (2007-2018). The research team interviewed 18 individuals in the district, including administrators, novice science teachers, mentor science teachers, retained science teachers, and the induction program coordinator. Other data collected included publicly available district documents, and documentation related to the mentoring and induction efforts provided by the district induction coordinator. The primary goal of the site visit was to better understand the factors that may have influenced teacher retention during the focus period of the data and to also investigate current practices around the mentoring and induction of new science teachers. Four factors were identified as salient to the high science teacher retention rate in the district: 1) collaborative and supportive colleagues in the science department, 2) the overall culture of the school, students, and community, 3) hiring and induction practices, and 4) ample resources for teaching and professional growth. 

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5. Best Practices in Chemistry Teacher Education

   https://doi.org/10.1021/bk-2019-1335.ch003  

   Stickney, K; Baker, K; Sachs, D. (August 2019, ACS symposium series)

   The University of Indianapolis Teach (STEM)3 (UIndy TS3) program is a clinical residency teacher preparation program in which candidates earn a Master of Arts in Teaching degree with licensure in Chemistry, Biology, or Math. UIndy TS3 consists of multiple layers of support, including a clinical residency with clinical mentor teachers and clinical faculty who also serve as university supervisors, integrated and scaffolded university coursework, which includes clinical seminars and classroom observations, and two years of in-service mentoring. Evaluation and retention results indicate that candidates are well-supported in their high-need classrooms by these program components, and our 3-year retention rate of 93% over eight cohorts is higher than the national average. Moreover, the clinical mentor teacher (CMT) is enriched by the candidate’s presence in the classroom, as the candidate imports new teaching methodologies (such as project-based learning) and technologies to the classroom that in turn inform the practice of the CMT. School administrators are also positively impacted by interacting with the candidates, both by keeping apprised of the challenges that new teachers face and by learning new ways to engage students. The efficacy of UIndy TS3 is proven by our 100% placement rate, long-term retention of program graduates, and their recognition as teacher leaders. 

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