Impacts of an Undergraduate STEM Teacher Recruitment and Preparation Program on Prospective Teachers’ Aspirations and Understanding

Abstract

We investigated how participating in a STEM teacher recruitment program impacted undergraduate students’ decisions to pursue teaching and their self-reported preparation for teaching. We collected and analyzed survey and interview data from current and former participants of a University of California system-wide STEM teacher recruitment program called CalTeach. We found a significant relationship between undergraduates’ decision to pursue a career in teaching and the number of undergraduate education courses they completed. We also found that undergraduates who decided to pursue a career in teaching reported various ways that CalTeach influenced their decision. Undergraduates reported that participating in CalTeach reinforced or strengthened their decision to pursue teaching and that the classroom-based field experiences were especially helpful in shaping their decision. Indeed, the field experience component of CalTeach provided participants with opportunities to gain experience working with students in a variety of grade levels and classroom contexts, gain a teacher’s perspective of classrooms, and gain opportunities to practice teaching or to apply theory and methods. Further, we found that undergraduates who decided not to pursue a teaching career also reported ways that CalTeach influenced their decision. For many in this latter group, CalTeach helped them realize that a career in teaching was not aligned with their strengths or interests. Finally, we found that CalTeach participants reported gaining more knowledge of current science and mathematics standards and a greater appreciation of teachers. However, fewer participants reported gaining an understanding of teaching multilingual learners. Our findings strengthen the argument for the implementation of STEM teacher recruitment programs and suggest ways to improve these programs. Recruitment programs should attend to the types of field experiences offered and how field experiences and coursework can deepen prospective teachers’ understanding of reform-based instruction for linguistically diverse students.