| Kimberly Lowry
University of Central Florida
The paths to becoming a mathematics teacher
FINAL REPORT
Increasing numbers of mathematics teachers must be recruited in coming years, because of a growing student population, teacher attrition, calls for smaller class size, and the need to replace out-of-subject teachers. Recruitment can be made more effective and efficient, if better information on career paths is provided to decision makers. This study attempts to analyze the academic decisions which lead to the outcome Òbecoming a mathematics teacherÓ.
Four groups were compared and contrasted: mathematics teachers, science teachers, other teachers, and non-teachers. The question of whether these groups differ in ways that could help predict the outcome of interest was examined using the NCES dataset B&B:93/97; it provides thousands of variables on academic path, demographics, and labor market histories for over 8,000 individuals. It was analyzed using the NCES online analytic tool DAS to generate tables showing percentage distribution of the four groups on variables organized according to the concepts demographics, family environment, academic path, and academic achievement. Further examination was conducted by entering the variables into a discriminant analysis.
Mathematics teachers (and science teachers, who were removed from the Òother teachersÓ category because of their many similarities to mathematics teachers) were found to differ from teachers of other K-12 fields on all of the four conceptual categories. However, only a few such differences were statistically significant. More significant differences were observed when the analyses were conducted separately for women and men. The direction of differences was found to trend toward making the outcome of becoming a mathematics teacher more likely for those who had lower SAT college entrance examination scores, attended public high schools, first attended two-year colleges, had lower GPAs, had more mathematics credits, and were female.
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