Teachers entered the field of education with varied educational experiences that left many first-year teachers feeling unprepared to lead their classrooms successfully. The quantitative study aimed to determine how and to what extent teachers perceived their preparedness as first-year teachers in classroom management, curriculum and planning, and…

Teacher success in schools does not occur in isolation; rather, novice teacher success is influenced by the school and district (Kraft, Papay, Charner-Laird, Johnson, Ng, & Reinhorn, 2015). In the past two decades, school leaders are taking more responsibility to ensure students have an effective teacher, irrespective of whether the teacher is…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Maryland music teacher education program completers' background and transition into the K-12 public school music teacher (N = 700). Using data from the Maryland Longitudinal Data System between 2008 and 2020, I examined characteristics associated with music teacher employment in the public schools, the…

Attempting to balance all the aspects of teaching can be overwhelming and challenging without the appropriate measures for novice teachers. The purpose of the mixed-methods study was to examine the challenges and opportunities in teacher retention of K-12 novice teachers in a rural, south Mississippi school district. Novice teachers may struggle…

Teacher stress continues to threaten the stability of the U.S. teaching workforce, but teacher mentoring, an increasingly prevalent type of teacher support, may uniquely support teachers with their risk-for-stress. The current study investigated how teacher mentoring experiences differ based on vulnerability to stress and teacher experience level.…

States, districts, and schools are seeking ways to ensure teachers remain in the profession. It is more common than ever for a novice teacher to leave the profession within 5 years. Therefore, building a strong teacher self-efficacy is critical to developing and retaining novice teachers. This study examined how teacher self-efficacy fluctuated…

Purpose: This study provides a longitudinal examination of the influences enhancing or constraining the development of efficacy in ten induction physical educators. Method: Over a span of three years, data from structured interviews and responses to the Physical Education Teaching Efficacy Scale were collected at seven time points. Utilizing a…

The factors that influence the construction of a teacher's sense of self-efficacy are complex. The authors used a qualitative research design to explore the reflections of a sample of 25 K-12 early career teachers as they made sense of their own abilities. The results show that theorized sources of self-efficacy--mastery experiences, vicarious…

The purpose of this collective case study was to explore the self-initiated reflective practices of early and late career inservice music teachers in a variety of educational settings. This research was guided by the following questions: (a) How do music teachers in a variety of settings and career stages describe the reasons they engage in…

This study explored K-12 teachers' perceptions of using artif icial intelligence (AI) in the classroom, aiming to understand their preparedness for professional development focused on AI integration. This paper presents findings from 141 in-service teachers enrolled in graduate programs at a Southern University, highlighting their views on AI,…

The purpose of this multiple case study was to examine the experiences of beginning music teachers as they navigate starting instrumental music programs in a large urban school district in the southern United States. A team of researchers collected data from three first-year music educators launching new instrumental programs at seven schools.…

We use a novel database of student teaching placements in Washington State to investigate teachers' transitions from student teaching classrooms to first job classrooms and the implications for student achievement. We find first-year teachers are more effective when they teach in the same or an adjacent grade, in the same school type, or in a…

This study utilized a quantitative, statistical, non-experimental design to collect, analyze, and interpret data or variables that might predict retention of beginning teachers(0-3 years of experience) and experienced teachers (more than 3 years of experience) in a rural county school system in Georgia. The following variables were examined:…

Professional development, typically initiated by administrators to improve student achievement outcomes, is often irrelevant to the needs of early career music teachers. As music teacher educators, we were concerned about issues of importance to early career music teachers as they entered the music teaching profession. We explored conversation as…

Background: Although there is some reported success in using gamification to improving engagement, others have critiqued that these video game like strategies are a mere "repackaging" of established classroom strategies. Many experiments with gamification, however, have only focused on those features that emphasize extrinsic rewards…