NSF Awards: 1821710, 1821462
Did you know that teachers in the United States rate their lives better than all occupation groups, trailing only physicians?*
This video will dig into some rather surprising data about the teaching profession. We will also share strategies and resources for sharing the facts about the profession so that students will have accurate information about their career prospects. Get the Facts Out is excited to work with hundreds of institutions on their STEM teacher recruitment efforts and is providing customized resources including student presentations, posters, brochures, program flyer templates, and presentations for faculty and staff who advise students. In addition, strategies and experiences from the use of these resources in many contexts will be shared, including how to talk to students about the profession, a listing of venues for reaching students, and recommendations for sharing the facts in your institution. All materials are professional quality, research-based, and have been extensively user-tested. Get the Facts Out is a partnership between the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, the American Mathematics Teacher Educators, and the American Association of Physics Teachers led by the Colorado School of Mines. NSF #1821710 & 1821462.
*Survey of 172,000 working adults by Gallup-Healthways
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Welcome to Get the Facts Out, a project that aims to help repair the reputation of the teaching profession and thereby inspire more people to become teachers of secondary STEM. Please join our growing community of practice at GettheFactsOut.org!
My name is David May, and I am the project manager for GFO (as we call it). I and our Principal Investigator Wendy Adams have spent many, many years working to improve STEM teacher preparation, and are very excited about the promise of this project for addressing the severe shortage of secondary STEM teachers.
Our research has found that many STEM faculty and others strongly value K-12 STEM teaching, yet:
Please keep in mind that many people have to dig into the data before they fully believe all of the facts that we present here. A fair amount of discussion of the data and what it means may also be necessary, because it runs counter to what the conventional wisdom is about how teachers fare in general.
That's why we would love for you to take part in this online discussion! If you can't for some reason but are still interested in learning more, please sign up for our periodic email newsletter (you can preview several issues first) and visit our website.
Donna Stokes
Barbara Hopkins
Hi David: Our state legislature is beginning a study to look at why so many are leaving the profession! I am going to send some of your project materials to them. It's certainly known that the Covid pandemic was challenging for teachers and parents. Did it influence your data? We had a large turnover in school and district administrators as well!
David May
Stephanie Chasteen
Barbara! My high school chemistry teacher! What a coincidence to have one of my inspirations show up on the project that I work on to promote high school STEM teaching! I'm the external evaluator for Get the Facts Out. e-wave!
Wendy Adams
David May
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Hi Barbara! Great question, and one we've been looking into for a while now. While teachers certainly have had it very rough, it turns out that even in the last two years they've been quitting at rates far lower than for people in other professions. Our evidence for this is from U.S. Dept. of Labor data as well as from some recent articles from ChalkBeat/AP, EdWeek, and The 74.
We know there is still a severe teacher shortage, especially in secondary STEM, and that it's getting worse. So we have our work cut out for us. And while business done by other professionals may have declined as the economy slumped, there's certainly no decline in the number of K-12 students who need teaching!
Thanks again for the question! I hope that's somewhat helpful. I don't know the specific numbers in NH, but that Labor data might have it.
Wendy Adams
Steve Maier
The messaging of this campaign is on point!
The resources available at the website (https://getthefactsout.org/) are numerous and include high quality, editable documents for programs to use as they see fit locally. Administrators and recruiters will especially appreciate the quick data sheets that get at why STEM teaching as a profession is an important and viable career of choice.
GFO makes it so much easier for departments to take on and/or enhance their ongoing recruitment efforts!
Paul Miller
Wendy Adams
David May
Paige Evans
Hello David! This is wonderful! We have used several of your resources throughout the years that have helped us with our recruiting.
Wendy Adams
David May
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Thanks Paige! Everyone watching our project's video should check out the one Paige made - it's a perfect example of the power of a teacher's story for generating even more interest in STEM teaching.
Wendy Adams
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Paige,
What a great video!!
K. Renae Pullen
Science Specialist
Fascinating project! Based on your research and what you've learned, how can schools and districts improve their recruitment efforts especially as it concerns BIPOC STEM educators?
Wendy Adams
Paul Miller
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Hi Renae, thanks for the question. While our project mostly works with college faculty on recruiting students to their preservice-teaching programs, we have had a number of fantastic interactions with school and district recruiters. In fact, we've started inviting them to co-present with us about our resources because they just know everything about recruiting teachers! They have found our project's resources to be very valuable for improving recruitment.
As for BIPOC STEM educators: our research has found that STEM majors who identify with a minoritized group have more interest in a teaching career than STEM majors who identify as white. It's not published yet, but one of our next steps is to get this information to those who recruit teachers!
Thanks for your question.
K. Renae Pullen
Brian Foley
Professor
I love the GFO materials for recruiting STEM teachers. They do a great job of directly addressing the misconceptions that a lot of students have about teaching. Using them has made my job much easier.
I am glad to hear that you are also working on the teacher retention issues. This really is becoming a crisis. I appreciate David's point that the rates of people leaving teaching are lower than some others, the bar to entering teaching is a lot higher than other professions (e.g. credential), so we can't replace teachers fast enough to meet the need.
David May
Wendy Adams
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Brian,
Thank you for the positive feedback! On your second point, agreed! We need to do more than add a student or two to our existing teacher prep programs. While that will certainly help, the shortage is larger than that! We're working on new resources to increase the numbers of students majoring in STEM for our next project. We are also trying to reach career changers. The problem is large enough that the solution must be multipronged.
Liza Bondurant
Liza Bondurant
Thank you for these wonderful materials! I have used the slides, posters, and customizable flyers.
Regarding teachers leaving the field, I wonder how valid and reliable some of the data we see in the media is. I am concerned that teachers who are considering leaving, may be persuaded to leave due by misleading media stories.
For example, according to Analysis: There’s Lots of Education Data Out There — and It Can Be Misleading. Here Are 6 Questions to Ask | The 74 (the74million.org)
under #5 "What is it measuring?"
... one of the most-cited statistics from a recent teachers union survey was that 29 percent of educators were considering leaving the profession. However, this was within a very specific context. When asked “How are you currently feeling about your work as an educator?” 7 of the 10 possible answers provided were negative — “stressed,” “overwhelmed,” “frustrated,” “worried,” “thinking about quitting or retiring,” “angry,” “worried about my own mental health.” Only three responses were positive: “happy,” “inspired” and “focused.”
With 7 out of 10 negative options it is no wonder teaching has a bad reputation and teachers begin to consider changing careers.
Wendy Adams
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Liza,
Exactly! If everyone around you is complaining about how terrible your job is, how can it not affect you? There are challenges in every career, especially over the past two years everyone has had a hard time. But if you follow the media, it infers that only teachers (and healthcare workers) have struggled. It provides a very unrealistic view of the world and is discouraging one of the most important bodies of professionals in our society. It seems irresponsible, imho.
I'm really glad you have found the materials useful!
Liza Bondurant
Ann Cavallo
Assistant Vice Provost and Director
Thank you for this presentation. Yes there are many misconceptions about teaching that may (but should not!) discourage students from pursuing this wonderful profession! Do you have material (I will also check your website) on some of the day-to-day on why it is a great job/career - on what the job is like? What I mean is, that it is not a mundane desk job - you are active as you work with students and other faculty, every day is different and full of surprises, you get to see the smiles on students' faces when they learn something new -- capturing the joy of teaching itself :).
Wendy Adams
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Hi Ann,
Yes! That is a central message in our student presentation. There is a slide with a pie chart showing the range of responses when we asked teachers to write down, what makes your job satisfying day-to-day. What you listed is exactly what they said. Over half of the responses were about their students both watching them grow and learn, and relationships. Following that were reasons including their schedule, their colleagues, the constant learning, and autonomy of the classroom.
Ann Cavallo
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
This data also appears on our "Becoming a Teacher" page, https://getthefactsout.org/prospective-teachers/ on the website. But it's more effective in a presentation when you can describe each area to them:)
Ann Cavallo
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Hi Ann. We also have professionally-made videos with real teachers talking about what they love about teaching, including the aspects you mention. Check out our video library, especially "Why I love my life as a teacher," "Why I decided to pursue teaching as a career," and "Did you know? Five surprising facts about the teaching profession" (especially the first fact).
Ann Cavallo
Ann Cavallo
Assistant Vice Provost and Director
Thank you! Very worthwhile and important work! Have you received feedback - even anecdotal - if this work has altered perspectives and encouraged students to pursue teaching?
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Yes, we have some anecdotal feedback that it's become easier to recruit students to teacher-prep programs in STEM. We are currently collecting actual data on enrollments in teacher ed programs; our initial suspicion is that while some programs are recruiting more and some less, on average they are doing better than many fields (and many teacher prep programs with which we don't interact). We'll see once we crunch the numbers.
Ann Cavallo
Ann Cavallo
Assistant Vice Provost and Director
This is great - I look forward to finding out what you learn! Thanks!
Stephanie Chasteen
Hi Ann, I'm the external evaluator for the project and I do have some new data on this question that Wendy said I could share with you!
Surveys of participants in the GFO workshops show large changes in attitude and knowledge about teaching as a career, with pre/post gains of 41% for student presentations and 45% for faculty presentations. These have large effect sizes of 1.9 and 2.3 respectively. These are shifts in both knowledge and attitudes. Post-test, most faculty and students give correct answers to factual questions (such as mid-career salaries and age of retirement). They also agree that teaching is a good career choice in general.
These attitude shifts for faculty are really important, since they are who the students to go to for career advice. Some of the data suggest that GFO empowers faculty to get involved in student recruitment, where they weren't sure what or how to recruit students to teaching before.
For student perception change, across 1,657 students who attended a presentation, 1/3 of students shifted towards agreement with "I want to be a grade 7-12 teacher." They typically disagreed prior to the presentation, and shifted more towards neutrality -- which is a reasonable change after just a short engagement.
Thus, the data suggests that GFO presentations to students and faculty are enhancing attitudes and information. Together, these are reducing the barriers for students to choose teaching careers.
Wendy Adams
Ann Cavallo
Ann Cavallo
Assistant Vice Provost and Director
Stephanie, thank you for this information! These are great results.
Vivian Guilfoy
Countering misinformation is a critical need these days. Your project is addressing this need directly in a number of ways and pointing a way forward for those who are entertaining the idea of teaching. You are opening a welcoming door, and helping prospective teachers learn from a community of practice that can portray a more realistic and positive frame of reference. When coupled with hands-on teaching experiences and supported by systems that are committed to enhancing the teaching professions, your efforts should contribute to an increased interest in and pursuit of teaching. How are you measuring the influence of your efforts?
Wendy Adams
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Hi Vivian,
Thank you!
We have a range of measures.
Hopefully this helps and I'm happy to provide more detail if you'd like!
Ann Cavallo
Stephanie Chasteen
Hi Vivian, I'm the external evaluator for the project and wanted to share some of the information about how project impact is assessed! I just completed the annual report for the project and there is some really compelling data I'd love to share:
1. The number of people using GFO is just growing a growing. The number of people registered in our database is now 202, most of whom are using GFO materials. These folks are conducting more student presentations than any of the formal project staff or partners: 93 this last year, reaching over 2200 students.
2. Student responses to those presentations conducted by those GFO users is also very positive.
3. Over the past 3 years, I estimate that the project has reached ~6600 students and ~4000 faculty through workshops, outreach, and engagement.
4. Surveys of participants in the GFO workshops show large changes in attitude and knowledge about teaching as a career, with pre/post gains of 41% for student presentations and 45% for faculty presentations. These have large effect sizes of 1.9 and 2.3 respectively. Even more critically, 1/3 of students shifted towards agreement with "I want to be a grade 7-12 teacher" after attending a workshop.
Thus, the data suggests that GFO has a broad reach, faculty appreciate the materials and use them well, and presentations to students and faculty are enhancing attitudes and information. Together, these are reducing the barriers for students to choose teaching careers.
David May
Wendy Adams
Vivian Guilfoy
Hi Stephanie: Excellent to see the results. We know that changing mindsets is a crucial step in shaping attitudes and actions. That is just another reason why your project is so important.
Wendy Adams
Ayanna Shivers
This is amazing! It ties into one of the things we are trying to do with our NOYCE Project. I will be using the website.
David May
Wendy Adams
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Ayanna,
I'm glad this will be helpful for your work:) Once you use GFO resources, it helps us out if you register as a GFO Champion (anyone who uses resources or even has a conversation with a student or colleague about the facts). https://getthefactsout.org/become-gfo-champion/
Please let us know how you decide to use these and what you found helpful!
Ashley Coon
Thank you for your video. I am interested in science teacher recruitment and retention, and have listened to many pre-service science teachers describe how difficult it was for them to find out information about teaching. I'm curious to know your thoughts on who is best positioned to share information about STEM teaching with undergraduate STEM majors - do you envision these presentations held by education faculty, by fellow STEM graduates who are pursuing teaching, or by science faculty (perhaps with interests in teaching)? Should these presentations take place in STEM courses, or should it be part of an extracurricular event (and housed in STEM buildings or schools of ed?)?
David May
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Hi Ashley,
Yes! All of the above:) Our resources are designed with faculty in mind, originally faculty in STEM departments; but we are finding a large number of faculty from schools of education, particularly directors of teacher education programs who find the resources helpful for their work broadly, not just for STEM prospective teachers. We also have student ambassadors at our institution who give these presentations to other students. Another one of our resources is the "Data Handouts" and these contain the same data that is found in the presentations and are nice to use during a conversation with a student or a colleague.
On our "How to reach students" page, we list a range of venues and ways to share the facts at your institution. https://getthefactsout.org/reach-students/
Sharing facts with any faculty and any students is helpful for shifting the culture so that a pre-service teacher doesn't feel the need to defend their career choice. Sharing the facts with pre-service teachers is helpful for retention. We often hear, "I was starting to question my choice, but now I'm solid after hearing this!"
Ann Cavallo
David May
Josh Stowers
GFO has great resources and has done a nice job keeping them up to date. I have used the presentations in my Exploration of Biology Teaching course with positive feedback from students. These are students who have already declared an interest in teaching Life Sciences. I am hoping this next Fall to be able to share this information with our intro majors' Biology courses to see if we can connect with students who may be a great fit for the profession. These resources are geared more toward physical sciences and math but have still been useful. Thanks for the work you have put into this project.
David May
Wendy Adams
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Hi Josh. Great to hear how the resources are working for you!
Just so others know: Yes, some of the presentation slides show data for math, chemistry, and/or physics. But most (if I recall) are either for all STEM or for all K-12 teachers.
Wendy Adams
Director Teach@Mines and Research Professor of Physics
Thank you! It's nice to hear how you've used GFO:)
Emily Jackson-Osagie
Great video! I'm planning to meet with STEM faculty this summer to help me with exposing STEM majors to a career in education. I've had a few STEM majors add an education minor in their junior year, so I would like to expose them earlier. Please provide any advice. Thanks!
David May
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Hi Emily, I'm so glad you'll be working on this with your colleagues in STEM and I'd be happy to provide some advice.
First, to expose STEM majors to education earlier than junior year, you can do many things: hire them as undergrad TA's or Learning Assistants for courses they've already taken; offer a 1-credit course on "intro to STEM teaching" or "Assist a local K-12 teacher once a week;" or give them the highly-effective student-facing presentation mentioned in our video.
Second, for meeting with STEM faculty about this effort, I strongly recommend starting out with our faculty-facing presentation. Our extensive research has found that because people hear so much misinformation about teaching, they really need to dig into the facts and discuss them before bringing accurate information to students. If you have time for the longer presentation, do it. If you don't, you will probably at least get a few colleagues to understand enough that they can do something worthwhile. Faculty often value teaching but don't understand a lot of the great things about it and thus can't communicate that to students.
I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions. And if you do plan to use any of our resources, please consider becoming a GFO Champion. It really helps us document our reach for NSF!
Wendy Adams
Maia Punksungka
This is a great video, and what you're doing is quite important! I'm curious to hear -- have you looked at the role of continued, or adult education and training opportunities for existing STEM teachers as a form of teacher retention? I'm interested to know what resources exist to ensure existing STEM teachers stay in the field as well as stay up-to-date in the field, and how effective these resources are.
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Hi Maia. Thanks for the intriguing question! We have not explicitly studied STEM teacher retention for this project, but we have heard anecdotally that many of the K-12 teachers who hear about our resources get very excited and "wish they'd seen them sooner in their careers." We suspect that knowledge of these facts about teaching tends to increase commitment to the profession among anyone, not just preservice teachers.
And many of the faculty with whom we work run STEM teacher preparation programs for inservice as well as preservice teachers (usually as a Master's level program). They are using GFO's resources wherever they can.
For our next grant, we are looking into creating resources that accurately compare teaching with other STEM careers (because that's what we've found students want). We will also be targeting older students and career-changers. These resources may also be helpful for inservice teachers who might (as most people) not be aware of all the facts about STEM career benefits. (Most people think an undergrad STEM degree will give you a six-figure salary, which is not the case.)
Kelly Costner
I've attended some virtual info/training sessions and registered as a GFO Champion. So far, I've just shared with colleagues, but we planning an organized campaign utilizing these resources and some local data that I requested that you all gather. Thanks so much for that!
But even without regional/local data, the fact that all the materials are customizable makes this a project that should and will have wide-ranging and long-lasting impacts. Everything looks classy in addition to providing much needed factual info, and those two features together will help seal the deal for many in the "yeah, but... I just don't know" phase!
David May
Get the Facts Out Project Manager and Research Associate
Hi Kelly. Thanks for your informative response! I'm glad you're finding the resources useful. We hope you continue to provide feedback like this (and even negative feedback, if you have it) so that we can make the resources as useful as possible.
We'll try to get working on your request for local data ASAP. It takes a lot of staff time but is definitely worth it: Students are happy to know about the local salary rates and costs of living, but faculty in particular are often reluctant to believe our national data until they dig into their local data.
Kelly Costner
David--So sorry to have misled you in my phrasing above. I requested the local data and it has already been compiled. We will indeed be making use of it! Thanks again to you and your team!
Wendy Adams
David May
Jane Jackson
I'm a GFO Champion, and I work with high school physics and chemistry teachers and TYC physics faculty nationwide. They KNOW who to encourage to become a high school teacher, and they have a lot of influence for their students. But they lack resources such as GFO can provide, but modified and simplified for their "quick" use from time to time in their classes, for reinforcement of encouragement during the school year. Can GFO query them as to what TYPES of resources will best serve them?
Jane Jackson
I'm responding to Liza Bondurant and Brian Foley, about STEM teachers leaving the field. In greater Phoenix, we have 40 job openings in high school chemistry and physics, in public DISTRICT schools (and probably more in charter high schools and private/parochial high schools; I haven't had time to look at their websites). This is MANY more than usual. It is a crisis. Yet the entire state of Arizona produces only about 8 new physics teachers each year, and about 16 new chemistry teachers. Some Phoenix-area school districts (e.g., Casa Grande UHSD and Maricopa USD) hire STEM subject teachers from the Philippines and other Asian nations, on 'cultural exchange" visas, where they can stay here only 5 years. Casa Grande UHSD had 28 such teachers last year.
Wendy Adams
Jane Jackson
I respond to Maia Punksungka, who asked about teacher retention and staying up-to-date. The demise of professional development for STEM subject teachers is alarming! This summer, only 25 multi-week Modeling Workshops will be held in physical, life, and computational sciences – down from 60 in 2017, due to demise of the two Federal grant programs for LOCAL teacher professional development.(They are listed at https://www.modelinginstruction.org )
Numerous physics teachers have written that professional development in Modeling Instruction saved their career! Teachers wrote : “If I had not found the Modeling Instruction pedagogy, I would most likely left teaching by now because I was so discouraged with the mile-wide, inch-deep approach that I was using.”
(More generally, K-12 science teacher professional development (PD) has declined in recent years. Horizon Research documented the decline; see Trends in U.S. Science Education from 2012 to 2018, by P. Sean Smith. 2020, Horizon Research, Inc. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED611301 )
Why has it declined? Because the Federal government ended 2 crucial PD programs, making PD much too expensive. Chief among the programs that served physics teachers was the U.S. Department of Education’s 2.5% set-aside for colleges in their formula Title II-A grants to each state. (That provided $1 million to Arizona each year, for subgrants for local teacher PD. The other program was the Math & Science Partnerships -- state formula grants that were subgranted to school districts. Impossible to use for HS physics & chemistry PD in most states.)
All of that is GONE. Now teachers nationwide must PAY typically $775 for a summer Modeling Workshop. It's unfair; wealthy private schools benefit -- and sometimes entire science departments transform -- but most PUBLIC schools are LEFT OUT. Bottom line: How can we re-instate these 2 Federal programs for LOCAL science teacher PD?