California Bay Area school districts are experiencing a teacher shortage that threatens to further widen the opportunity gap for schools with the neediest student populations. Financial incentives, administrator support levels, appropriate and consistent professional development, and mentoring are often cited as areas that cause teachers to leave…

This knowledge brief is part of a continuing series designed to inform California education leaders about key policy issues related to teachers and teaching in the Golden State. The brief outlines the current policy environment surrounding math instruction in California, summarizes California information from a nationwide teacher survey on…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on education. Science teaching, in particular, has faced specific challenges given the field's emphasis on high-quality instruction that has students "do" science collaboratively rather than just read about it or hear about it in a lecture. This brief provides: (1) a summary of data collected…

In 2023, California will implement a new statewide math framework that will drive curriculum decisions and pedagogical approaches for years to come. Although the state's content standards for mathematics are not changing, a statewide framework could nevertheless shift instruction by providing educators with guidance on how to implement content…

For teachers of immigrant-origin students and their peers, emerging research notes the challenge of facilitating a high-quality education for students subject to traumatic events related to harsh immigration enforcement policies. This study examines whether new teachers from seven teacher preparation programs experienced the impacts of immigration…

These appendices accompany the report "Final Report of the i3 Impact Study of Making Sense of SCIENCE, 2016-17 through 2017-18." Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in the…

The goal of this research study was to find what makes groupwork to be successful. We asked faculty why they give groupwork assignments to their students and what their opinions about the best practices in creating effective groupwork environment for their students are. It was also intended to compare instructors' opinions with research findings…

This mixed-methods study explores the experiences and influence of induction on novice teachers. The authors quantitatively analyze survey data from over two thousand novice teachers and a thousand of their coaches through statistical comparisons and multiple linear regression analyses to explore whether structures of induction are associated with…

This is the technical appendices to "Destination Integration: Perspectives of Students and Advisors about Improving Academic Advising. Part 2 of a Series on Academic Advising from the CSU Student Success Network." This research explores advising practices on five CSU campuses, expands on the previous report by bringing in the voices of…

The existing literature on non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty focuses largely on whether relying on contingent faculty is harmful to students. However, studies rarely survey contingent faculty or explore how to increase NTT faculty participation in outcomes assessment, even though contingent faculty teach most general education courses. Our survey of…

School climate is increasingly intertwined with efforts to create safe schools and improve social-emotional learning and academic outcomes. While current definitions of school climate implicate the decisions and actions of school staff members, the majority of school climate research focuses on the perspectives of students. This study presents an…

First-Year Seminars (FYS) are among the high-impact practices described by AAC&U. We studied the long-standing First-Year Seminar Program at our public research university for the ways in which writing assignments--individualized for each seminar--help faculty and students achieve program objectives in critical and analytical thinking, the…

Mental Health Problems among college and university students represent a significant public health issue in the United States. Mental disorders account for nearly one-half of the disease burden for young adults in the United States (World Health Organization, 2008), and most lifetime mental disorders have first onset by age 24 (Kessler et al.,…

The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) provides a year-long authentic astronomy research project by partnering a research astronomer with small groups of educators. NITARP has worked with a total of 103 educators since 2005. In this paper, surveys are explored that were obtained from 74 different educators, at up to four waypoints…

This exploratory research surveyed faculty who instruct in community colleges from 18 states about their attitudes toward the concealed carry gun policies that allow appropriately licensed citizens to carry a handgun in public places such as college campuses. Building upon previous research involving 4-year institutions, we surveyed 1,889…