Creating interest in teaching: Science classroom experiences for academically talented college science majors

✍ Scribed by Debra Tomanek

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 806 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1046-560X
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00117036

✦ Synopsis

Many efforts are underway to improve preservice science teacher education and professional development for inservice teachers. Other reform efforts focus on issues of recruitment and retention of science and mathematics teachers, particularly minorities and women. Examples of large organizations supporting the recruitment and retention efforts are the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, and the Carnegie Corporation.

Few projects, however, have focused exclusively on increased efforts to recruit academically talented college science students into the teaching field. The inattention to recruitment of highly academic students has raised questions by some education experts about the quality of teacher education inductees. Schlechty and Vance (1983) reviewed several studies that caused them to conclude that "education is having difficulty attracting and retaining the services of academically able college students" (p. 477). They examined the studies for information on the quality of candidates recruited into the profession, those who actually entered the teaching profession, and those who remained in teaching over an extended period of time. Schlechty and Vance (1983) found that teacher education majors had lower ACT, SAT, and GRE scores than their nonteaching counterparts. They also cited a decline in the number of high ability females choosing teacher education This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy Preservice Teacher Enhancement Program (Grant No. DE-FG06-94ER75964). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the DOE.