An Inquiry Into the Development of Teacher Identities in STEM Career Changers

National shortages of math and science teachers have led to a variety of strategies and programs to attract second career professionals into teaching. This qualitative study explores the development of professional teaching identities in six STEM career changers in a post-baccalaureate pre-service teacher credential program in California. Findings suggest the career changers relied upon skills developed in their previous careers to navigate through a new profession; however, returning to the life of a student again was difficult. Additionally, the career changers in this study valued interacting with their traditional aged peers in the program as these relationships were beneficial to their own socialization into teaching as they developed their teacher identities.

[1]  L. Darling-Hammond.  The Challenge of Staffing Our Schools. , 2001 .

[2]  D. Mayer.  Building teaching identities: Implications for preservice teacher education , 1999 .

[3]  E. Guba,et al.  Naturalistic inquiry: Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985, 416 pp., $25.00 (Cloth) , 1985 .

[4]  J. Wallace,et al.  Subject, Relationships and Identity: The Role of a Science Department in the Professional Learning of a Non-University Science Educated Teacher , 2007 .

[5]  J. Lagowski.  National Science Education Standards , 1995 .

[6]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[7]  J. Calderhead,et al.  Reflective teaching and teacher education , 1989 .

[8]  Blythe McVicker Clinchy,et al.  Women s ways of knowing: The development of self , 1988 .

[9]  Leslie Santee Siskin.  Realms Of Knowledge: Academic Departments In Secondary Schools , 1994 .

[10]  M. Belenky,et al.  Women's ways of knowing : the development of self, voice, and mind , 1988 .

[11]  J. Walkington.  Becoming a teacher: encouraging development of teacher identity through reflective practice , 2005 .

[12]  Dianne Chambers,et al.  The Real World and the Classroom: Second-Career Teachers , 2002 .

[13]  Helen Freidus.  Supervision of Second Career Teachers: What's Our Line?. , 1994 .

[14]  Edward R. Ducharme,et al.  Reflecting on Reflecting , 1996 .

[15]  J. Nespor.  The Role of Beliefs in the Practice of Teaching. , 1987 .

[16]  Sandra K. Abell,et al.  Recruiting Future Science and Mathematics Teachers Into Alternative Certification Programs: Strategies Tried and Lessons Learned , 2006 .

[17]  M. Fullan,et al.  Teacher Development And Educational Change , 1992 .

[18]  R. Powell.  Teaching alike: A cross-case analysis of first-career and second-career beginning teachers' instructional convergence , 1997 .

[19]  Charles J. Eick,et al.  What makes an inquiry‐oriented science teacher? The influence of learning histories on student teacher role identity and practice , 2002 .

[20]  Sandra Hollingsworth,et al.  Prior Beliefs and Cognitive Change in Learning to Teach , 1989 .

[21]  R. J. Bogumil,et al.  The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action , 1985, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[22]  E. Wenger.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[23]  Mary Louise Gomez,et al.  Personal experience as a guide to teaching , 2000 .

[24]  Leslie L. Huling,et al.  Preparing Second-Career Teachers. , 2001 .

[25]  Lois W. Sayrs.  Interviews : an introduction to qualitative research interviewing , 1996 .

[26]  D. Schoen,et al.  The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action , 1985 .

[27]  유창조.  Naturalistic Inquiry , 2022, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[28]  S. Barley,et al.  Occupational Communities: Culture and Control in Organizations , 1982 .

[29]  A. Collins,et al.  Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning , 1989 .

[30]  J. Shea.  National Science Education Standards , 1995 .

[31]  M. Pajares,et al.  Teachers’ Beliefs and Educational Research: Cleaning Up a Messy Construct , 1992 .