Social Resource Availability and Use of Early Career STEM Teachers
Faculty Mentor
Bo Idsardi
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Start Date
5-7-2024 12:25 PM
End Date
5-7-2024 12:45 PM
Location
PAT 328
Primary Discipline of Presentation
Biology
Abstract
Early career secondary science and mathematics teachers are the most vulnerable to leaving education. Social resources, such as a teacher next door or family members, can help support teachers, build resilience, and establish additional social, material, and/or human resources. This quantitative observation study examined the social resources that early career science and mathematics teachers in high needs schools had access to and used over one academic year. This work was framed by the Conservation of Resources theory, which describes how individuals with more resources are more capable of gaining additional resources and be less vulnerable to resource loss. Participants included science (n=22) and mathematics (n=4) teachers in their first five years of teaching across the United States. Teachers completed electronic surveys at the beginning, middle, and end of the year to report on their access and use of social, material, and human resources over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year. I used Friedman tests to determine if teachers’ access and use of social resources changed over the year. There was a slight increase in the number of social resources available to teachers across the year, but their use of resources did not change over time. Teachers frequently used the teacher next door and students and rarely used professor(s) and peer(s) from an induction program. Future research will explore the ways in which social resources influence the use of other resources and develop teacher resilience.
Recommended Citation
Hamada, Emily J.A., "Social Resource Availability and Use of Early Career STEM Teachers" (2024). 2024 Symposium. 9.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2024/op_2024/o4_2024/9
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Social Resource Availability and Use of Early Career STEM Teachers
PAT 328
Early career secondary science and mathematics teachers are the most vulnerable to leaving education. Social resources, such as a teacher next door or family members, can help support teachers, build resilience, and establish additional social, material, and/or human resources. This quantitative observation study examined the social resources that early career science and mathematics teachers in high needs schools had access to and used over one academic year. This work was framed by the Conservation of Resources theory, which describes how individuals with more resources are more capable of gaining additional resources and be less vulnerable to resource loss. Participants included science (n=22) and mathematics (n=4) teachers in their first five years of teaching across the United States. Teachers completed electronic surveys at the beginning, middle, and end of the year to report on their access and use of social, material, and human resources over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year. I used Friedman tests to determine if teachers’ access and use of social resources changed over the year. There was a slight increase in the number of social resources available to teachers across the year, but their use of resources did not change over time. Teachers frequently used the teacher next door and students and rarely used professor(s) and peer(s) from an induction program. Future research will explore the ways in which social resources influence the use of other resources and develop teacher resilience.
