ERIC Number: EJ910221
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1071-6084
EISSN: N/A
Perceived Life Satisfaction of Workplace Specialist I Faculty and Mentors Participating in a First-Year STEM Teacher Training Project
Nickolich, David; Feldhaus, Charles; Cotton, Sam; Barrett, Andrew, II; Smallwood, Jim
Journal of Technology Studies, v36 n2 p41-54 Fall 2010
The purpose of this study was to measure perceived professional and personal life satisfaction of Indiana Workplace Specialist I (WS I) faculty and their mentors. Workplace Specialist I teachers are all first-year career and technical education (CTE) faculty who must complete the WS I training program to be eligible for the Workplace Specialist II teaching license. These new teachers bring significant professional skills and experience to the secondary classroom; however, none had completed traditional teachers college training before they were licensed. WS I faculty are assigned mentors during the first year of training. Mentors must have at least five years of kindergarten-12 (K-12) teaching experience, and typically they are CTE faculty members. During a WS I/Mentor training workshop, 84 first-year WS I faculty and 68 mentors were asked to take the Life Satisfaction Index for the Third Age (LSITA) in an effort to determine perceived overall life satisfaction; 105 total people participated in the study. Of these 105, 45 mentors perceived life satisfaction as higher than did the 60 first-year WS I CTE teachers. The results of the statistical analyses revealed statistical significance at the 0.1 level (0.068). When analyzing only participants (both mentors and WS I teachers who were 50 years of age or older, the results of the statistical analyses revealed a statistical significance at the 0.05 level (0.023) between the perceived life satisfaction results of the 10 first-year WS I faculty and the 28 mentors. Mentors who were 50 years of age or older had a higher level of perceived life satisfaction than did the first-year WS I faculty members of the same age group. (Contains 5 tables.)
Descriptors: Mentors, Elementary Secondary Education, Life Satisfaction, Statistical Significance, Specialists, Teaching Experience, Inservice Teacher Education, Coaching (Performance), Teacher Workshops, Age Differences, Teacher Surveys, Quality of Life, Vocational Education Teachers
Epsilon Pi Tau. International Office, Technology Building, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403-0296. Tel: 419-372-2425; Fax: 419-372-9502; e-mail: ept@bgsu.edu; Web site: http://eptglobal.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Indiana
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A