By: Stacy Olitsky, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Saint Joseph's University
The decision to remain a science or math teacher, or to continue teaching within a particular school, is closely related to sense of identity (Ware & Kitsantas, 2007). The development of strong professional identities may be able to help teachers navigate through challenging experiences, thereby supporting commitment to the profession (Brown & McNamara, 2011; Proweller & Mitchener, 2004) and to teaching in high-need contexts (Grillo & Klier, 2021). In addition, the development of reform-oriented identities is an incentive for science and math teachers to continually innovate in their instruction (Luehmann, 2007), such as by increasing their use of student-centered practices and culturally responsive approaches.
Seeking to better understand the factors that contribute to identity development and retention of highly qualified science and math teachers in high-need schools, a qualitative, longitudinal study was conducted as part of a Phase II Noyce Scholarship Monitoring and Evaluation grant: Investigating the Relationship between Social Interaction, Teacher Identity, and Commitment to Teaching in High-Need Urban Schools (NSF DUE 1439417). This four-year study tracked twelve early career teachers who had received Noyce scholarships, exploring both the supports and barriers to their retention as science and math teachers in their positions.
Participants were recruited based on their participation in Noyce programs in seven universities that were part of a larger network of institutions. The new teachers were assigned mentors through the Noyce program, and they had access to other forms of support such as speaker events, meetings, informal gatherings, and conferences. Data collection included interviews, field notes from classroom visits, artifacts, and journal entries. Each teacher was at a different high school or middle school, enabling cross-site comparisons.
Frameworks
Teacher Identity
In this study, identity is viewed as an outcome of social interactions (Gee, 2000). It includes role identities (Eick & Reed, 2002), group affiliations or memberships (Collins, 2004), and positional identities, which emerge from an individual’s life experiences and are affected by gender, class, race, ethnicity, age, and religion (Moore, 2008). Identity theory (Stryker & Burke, 2000) highlights the ways in which particular aspects of identities become more salient due to having them affirmed. However, inconsistencies between views of self and feedback from others can lead to identity conflict and can negatively impact salience of any particular aspect of identity. In order to reduce identity conflict, people may change behavior to accord with a particular set of expectations or discard an identity altogether. Identity conflicts can emerge frequently for teachers, such as when feedback from supervisors does not match with self-views, or when school structures restrain their ability to act in accordance with their values and/or positional identities. Persistent identity conflicts for an early career teacher could reduce their sense of membership and contribute to attrition from the profession or disengagement from particular instructional practices.
Interactional Solidarity
Membership identities and identity conflicts are impacted by the outcomes of daily interactions. The sociologist Randall Collins (2004) argues that people are continually drawn to solidarity-building interaction rituals characterized by bodily co-presence, mutual focus, common mood, boundaries to outsiders, coordination of body movements and speech, and intersubjective emotional experience. The circulating symbols in these interactions then become invested with emotional energy. Conversely, failed interaction rituals or alienation leads to a loss of emotional energy. Collins describes that membership identities are shaped through chains of interaction rituals as people decide on groups with which to affiliate based on expectations of the emotional energy that they will gain from participation in these groups. Therefore, if teachers anticipate successful interaction rituals with students, colleagues, supervisors, and families, their professional identities are more likely to solidify.
While interactions with others are a main source of emotional energy, Collins (2004) and Archer (2012) argue that people can develop internal solidarity through productive, affirming self-talk. Conversely, without the necessary ingredients for internal solidarity, self-talk can be overwhelmingly negative, such as mulling-over, circular self-talk that leads to “fractured reflexivity” (Archer, 2012) rather than action.
Findings
To illustrate some of the findings, I describe two teachers’ experiences, with a discussion of barriers and affordances to professional identity development and retention. While the teachers’ school settings differed in a variety of ways, all of the schools were high need and served mostly students of color from low-income families.
Connor’s Experiences
As an undergraduate, Connor, a White male teacher candidate, cultivated a commitment to teaching in high-need urban schools and a valuing of student-centered instruction.
Barriers in Year 1: Disconnect Between Values and Practices
In his first teaching position, he encountered obstacles teaching math using project-based approaches. He struggled with classroom management, found that students responded in a more positive way to traditional instruction, and noticed that his colleagues mostly used lecture. He therefore felt isolated and experienced negative self-talk when classroom events did not go as planned, or when he ended up emphasizing lecture-based approaches in contradiction with his values.
Over time, the lack of successful interaction rituals in his classroom and with colleagues could have led to Connor leaving the profession or rejecting the reform-minded teacher identity that he had developed. However, over several years Connor was able to persist through these conflicts in ways that led him to retain his professional identity associated both with project-based instruction and with commitment to high-need urban schools.
Affordances in Years 2-4: Distance Communities Leading to Interactional Solidarity
From his first to his second year, Connor began participating more in distance communities accessed through the Noyce network that were focused on reform in math instruction. He therefore experienced solidarity-producing interactions with other teachers who were also struggling to implement project-based learning and other student-centered approaches. At the same time, he reported developing new self-talk strategies, which included empathizing with students when they expressed their viewpoints, and affirming the value of his lessons even when they were not fully successful on any particular day.
Affordances in Years 2-4: Increased Freedom in Classroom Management
In his second year, Connor began to overlook certain rule infractions in the interest of attending to the experiences of the rest of the class. He recognized that schools’ rules that arbitrarily restrained students’ movement just led to conflictual relationships that interfered with learning. Connor experienced increasing levels of success in implementing projects in his classroom as his connections with students became stronger.
Affordances in Years 3-4: Autonomy in Curriculum Planning
In his third year of teaching, Connor left his school to teach in another school in the district. In this new position, he was given more autonomy by the administration, and encouraged to pursue innovative teaching practices. He began creating more of his own activities connected to student interests, such as measuring objects in the local environment and connecting math with art and music. He also developed assignments in which students explored topics and presented findings to peers. He described, “having the students design a poster on a topic has been tremendously successful–students came up with creative ways to summarize their understandings.”
Outcomes: Professional Identity and Retention
While Connor did not collaborate with math colleagues at his new school, he further developed connections with a reform-minded community of educators through Noyce. He describes, “the lasting nature of the relationships is what helps carry me through…a person to call to find out about new get-togethers of math teachers, and so on.” His descriptions of these events accord with Collins’ depictions of successful interaction rituals, with animated conversations that lead to the imbuing of emotional energy into the symbols associated with the group – in this case, the project-based instructional practices. When events do not go as planned, he is able to seek support from colleagues and engage in solidarity-producing self-talk that affirms his goals and facilitates action.
Through a combination of support from distance professional communities and autonomy in his school setting, Connor had developed a strong professional identity as a math teacher in high-need schools who continually innovates.
Angela’s Experiences
Angela is a Black woman who became a science teacher in the same city in which she grew up. She described, “it is my privilege to ignite that passion of learning and ambition in my students just as my teacher did for me.”
Barriers in Years 1 and 2: Lack of School Support for STEM Instruction
In her first position, her sense of professional identity was obstructed due to high turnover among colleagues and a lack of attention to her subject area by the administration. She was told to develop the science curriculum for her grade level, yet not given support to do so. While she did receive mentoring through the Noyce program, she felt that as a new teacher she would have benefited from more guidance within her own school. She left her initial position after two years, finding another within the same district.
Affordances in Year 3: Autonomy and Connections with Community
In her next school, she initially felt supported. Observations of Angela’s classroom indicated that she had established an engaging and rigorous learning environment. The classroom was bright and colorful, with posters that contained chemistry content, inspirational quotes, and information about scientists from diverse backgrounds. She developed engaging assignments including science fair presentations, and worked to meet students’ needs through a combination of high expectations for achievement and building relationships through listening and understanding. Her students performed well both in her class and on state exams.
Barriers in Year 4: Decreased Freedom in Classroom Management
Identity conflicts emerged when new policies in her school positioned her students in deficit ways, with reduced time to change classes, stricter rules regarding discipline infractions, and professional development for teachers that pressured them to give more demerits to students and establish emotion-less, “robotic” environments. She explained, “I am supposed to take all of the human and relationship qualities out of addressing students and use this standardized way of speaking.” These policies did not accord with her warm, connected professional identity emerging from her positionality. She described that her students were already achieving in her class and would be adversely impacted by these new approaches.
Barriers in Year 4: Feedback from Supervisors Not Matching Values and Practices
Meetings with her supervisor became strained, as she was confronted on actions such as not giving out enough demerits. While she had collegial relationships with peers and mentors through Noyce, these resources were not sufficient to counter the lack of autonomy and identity conflict that she was facing within her own school. Angela was subject to alienating interaction rituals with supervisors, with implications for her internal solidarity and therefore her sense of identity and belonging.
Outcomes: Maintaining Professional Identity, Yet Leaving the School
Angela strove to teach in accordance with the practices that she valued. She continued to work in the field of education but left this school.
Implications
An identity lens can illuminate some of the elements that shape retention of science and math teachers, and that influence the implementation of student-centered and culturally responsive approaches. Following are some findings highlighted in this study:
Currently there are calls for recruiting and preparing more culturally responsive educators in order to better serve students in high-need areas. The effectiveness of such efforts will be enhanced if combined with a multifaceted approach to increase retention of these dedicated and innovative teachers. The results of this study indicate the importance of teacher autonomy in classroom management and instructional approaches, combined with access to professional communities that can facilitate solidarity-producing interactions around pedagogy and foster productive self-talk.
To enhance retention efforts, future studies could explore both affordances and obstacles that teachers encounter when integrating various aspects of their professional identities into their instructional practices. In addition, planning to improve teacher preparation and ongoing support may benefit from research that investigates the impact of internal conversations on teacher persistence and retention, possible approaches to promoting productive self-talk, and ways of cultivating solidarity-building distance communities focused on pedagogy.
Acknowledgement
We are pleased to announce that blog author Stacy Olitsky is one of the 2024 ARISE blog editors. Watch for a blog she has chosen by Kristin Napolitano and co-authors from Mercy College on effective practices for STEM teacher persistence through community building.
Stacy Olitsky, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Saint Joseph's University
Stacy Olitsky is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Saint Joseph’s University. Her research has focused on identity and learning, social and emotional engagement in science classrooms, collaborations between science and math faculty members and K-12 teachers, and science and math teacher retention in high-need schools. She also works on several projects with the Philadelphia Regional Institute for STEM Educators (PRISE) aimed at increasing the number of diverse STEM educators and building a culture of belonging in STEM classrooms.![](https://aaas-arise.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Stacy-Olitsky_2023-e1715285356163.jpg")
solitsky@sju.edu
