HGSE News: Teaching's Next Generation--What Will It Take to Attract and Keep New Teachers?

Over the next 10 years, U.S. schools will need to hire an unprecedented 2.2 million new teachers. Yet in today's expansive job market, with its escalating definition of a competitive salary, teaching is underpaid and often considered lacking in opportunities for professional growth. Who will become the next generation of teachers? And what will it take to recruit talented people and keep them in the profession?

Pforzheimer Professor Susan Moore Johnson

With the support of a $400,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation, Susan Moore Johnson, the Pforzheimer professor of education in learning and teaching, is providing some answers to these questions. A leading national authority on teacher unions, Johnson, together with a team of four doctoral students, has begun to examine the various paths by which today's new teachers enter and negotiate their careers in classrooms across the country.

Choosing to Teach
"The whole concept of a career has changed for young people," says Johnson, who began her career teaching high school in 1967. She recalls that women and minorities had fewer career opportunities and that teaching "offered an accessible and secure, if not lucrative, job." Following a standard one-year certification program teachers began what they expected would be lifelong careers in the classroom.

Thirty years later, when Johnson's daughter, Erica, considered a teaching career after college, the context had changed. She and her classmates were actively recruited to work in investment banking, consulting, and technology, where beginning salaries averaged twice those of first-year teachers. Wanting to test her interest in teaching before investing in an advanced degree, Johnson's daughter joined Teach for America, where in five weeks she became qualified to teach first grade.

Given the variety of new options available to young people and competition from other professions, Johnson says, states will have to continue to find ways to streamline the qualification process and increase the financial rewards of choosing to teach. Massachusetts, for instance, recently expanded its Signing Bonus Program, which offers successful candidates both a lump-sum bonus and the chance to become quickly certified through a six-week summer training program. One major thread of Johnson's study will track similar incentive programs to learn how successful they are, what kinds of candidates they attract, and whether they can be used strategically to help staff under-resourced schools.

The Importance of Mentoring
If states have started to find creative ways to recruit new teachers, they have not always had equal success at retaining them. The drop-out rate for new teachers is 20 percent in the first three years. Why do so many teachers give up on careers in the classroom? What motivates others to stay? Another important piece of Johnson's research project focuses on the actual workplace environment provided for novice teachers, examining the kinds of orientation and curriculum support and the amount of guidance and teamwork they encounter on the job.

"When experienced teachers work together with new teachers, and when there's a well-planned mentoring system, experienced teachers and new teachers do better," Johnson stresses. "It can make for a very lively school and teachers feeling very supported." In contrast, her research has already shown that too many schools provide little or no orientation and leave teachers feeling isolated from their colleagues. "When schools don't pay attention to new teachers," warns Johnson, "there's a real possibility that they will become bankers."

Research with a Purpose
Johnson, former academic dean at HGSE, used a Spencer Grant in 1999 for pilot research on the expectations and experiences of 50 first- and second-grade teachers in Massachusetts. Her new work builds upon preliminary findings through four in-depth studies—on personal motives and professional aspirations, professional culture and induction, curricula and assessment practices, and teacher-incentive and reward programs—of the next generation of teachers.

As student numbers grow and a generation of teachers recruited during the 1960s baby boom approaches retirement, Johnson and her research team believe their findings can help policymakers find ways to attract and keep the best possible teachers in an increasingly competitive market. "However much new teachers may differ from the past generation," says Johnson, "they are similar in that they care about their students, and they want to succeed and make a difference. It's important that schools be places where good teachers can teach."

For More Information
Information on Susan Moore Johnson and her research can be found in the Faculty Profiles.

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