The purpose of this article was to problematize the recruitment, preparation, and retention of Black women teachers in an effort to promote awareness, research, and action. Black women teachers impact the educative and socioemotional needs of all students. However, this impact is most noticeable when Black women serve large populations of Black…

Using unique data from California on teacher job vacancies, we investigate staffing challenges across the urbanicity spectrum, focusing on the extent to which the characteristics of rural school systems explain the differences in staffing challenges as measured by vacancy rates and emergency credentialed teachers, relative to other urbanicities.…

A superintendent initiates an equity focus in a small school district and experiences resistance from both school board members and principals. As the school district diversifies its teaching workforce, the superintendent and principals face myriad unexpected challenges, resulting in teachers of color resigning at three times the rate of White…

A growing literature documents the importance of student teaching placements for teacher development. Emerging evidence from this literature highlights the importance of the mentor teacher who supervises this placement, as teachers tend to be more effective when they student teach with a mentor who is a more effective teacher. But the efficacy of…

When it comes to ensuring every student gets great teachers, state governments play a crucial and underappreciated role. Without access to the right data, school systems will struggle to match the supply and demand for new teachers. Without certification policies that prioritize student impact over paper credentials, too many talented people will…

Rural regions struggle to retain early intervention (EI), special education (SE), and early childhood education (ECE) supports for children with developmental delay and/or disability, yet there is little guidance to prepare pre-service students for rural practice. This exploratory scoping review of rural EI/SE/ECE practice in the United States and…

As the nation's high school student population becomes increasingly diverse, the lack of minority teachers, particularly African American male teachers, is a concern. This case study of African American male high school teachers in a mid-sized market in the Midwest sought to identify the motivations for teaching, the barriers prior to and during…

While kinesiology as a field and as an academic major has evolved and diversified considerably over the last several decades, the cultural and racial demographics of kinesiology majors has remained fairly similar to the demographic characteristics of the early 2000s and before. There is incongruence between the actual diversity of the American…

This study examined the long-term impact of a special education residency program in high-need urban schools on the recruitment, program completion, and hiring and retention of graduates. Findings from this study, expanding research to special education teacher preparation, are consistent with a growing body of research that suggests that a…

Educational reforms have occurred throughout the history of public education. In 2009, the federal Race to the Top initiative was born and included many educational reform models. To have these reform models gain traction at the state level, a call was made by the U.S. Department of Education (Race to the Top Program Executive Summary, 2009) for…

This study reports the findings from a survey of 201 recent teacher education graduates from a university in the north-western United States of America regarding the factors that influenced their decision to take a teaching position in a rural or urban community following graduation. Results indicate that an in-depth rural practicum experience,…

Background: Currently there are international concerns over teacher recruitment and attrition rates, especially in mathematics and the physical sciences. Much has been written about the recruitment of student teachers and the reasons people give for going into teaching, but little on the broader context of these people's lives and the complex…

Rural schools in the United States serve more than 9.3 million students (Showalter et al., 2019), often possessing strengths and facing challenges that differ from their metropolitan and suburban counterparts. To attend to the unique context of rural schools and to encourage rural education research in key areas, the National Rural Education…

Students of color do not pursue teaching careers as often as their white counterparts. Project Teacher Development (PTD) is a partnership between a large urban school district and a public regional university to recruit and prepare students of color as future educators. The goal of PTD is to identify, mentor, and inspire high school students to…

There is a shortage of male elementary school teachers in the United States. Men who choose careers as elementary school teachers must be confident and ignore social barriers that keep other men from considering the profession. The current investigation seeks to understand the viewpoints of men who teach elementary school, a career predominated by…