A Person-Oriented Approach to Characterizing Beginning Teachers in Alternative Certification Programs by Elaine Chin and John W. Young In this article, the authors argue for the use of ecological models of development in studies of teachers prepared through alternative certification (AC) programs. Previous studies of candidates in AC programs have focused on variables that describe their demographic characteristics. An ecological approach focuses on persons and situates their desires and attitudes toward teaching as shaped by their particular life circumstances and personal histories. This approach was applied to a large-scale study of individuals enrolled in California’s teacher internship program. The results are the development of six typological profiles that capture some of the complexities behind why individuals choose to enter teaching through AC routes. Keywords: alternative certification; ecological models of development; teacher characteristics; teacher education; preservice teachers
here is a widening gap between legislative policies that actually govern teacher licensure and those that teacher educators argue are necessary for preparing new teachers. The fissure between policy makers and teacher educators is particularly noticeable in the policies that have developed around alternative certification (AC). Conflicts exist in part because of differences in perspectives and aims. Policy makers are interested in solving immediate problems in the teacher labor market, using whatever tools are available to increase supply. Teacher educators draw on generalizable models of socialization and development that must transcend the particulars of persons and places. Their aim is to prepare teachers for an infinite variety of situations and schools in which they might work. At bottom, both communities are interested in providing an adequate supply of wellprepared teachers for public schools. Both suffer equally from the paucity of knowledge about what it means to prepare teachers in specific ways for particular contexts.
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Educational Researcher, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 74–83 DOI: 10.3102/0013189X07299192 © 2007 AERA. http://er.aera.net
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The project that is the basis for this article focused on the preparation of teachers within a particular policy environment. It is a policy that has been adopted by a number of states to solve the problem of looming teacher shortages, especially in subject areas and types of schools that are typically understaffed. The policy is the granting of certification through alternative pathways. Although the debate between proponents and critics of AC continues to rage about the efficacy of alternative routes to licensure, no one can deny that AC programs are here to stay. All but three states have policies that recognize AC programs as legal and legitimate routes to certification (Feistritzer, Haar, Hobar, & Scullion, 2005). In California, Florida, New York, and Texas, four of the five states with the largest K–12 student populations (Hoffman, Sable, Naum, & Gray, 2006), large proportions of newly minted teachers are prepared through AC programs. California is a unique case in its use of AC programs. Since 1996, California has provided state funding of $2,500 per enrolled candidate to support its AC programs. California’s AC programs annually produce 20% of all newly credentialed teachers. Given the contributions made to the teacher workforce by AC programs, a number of questions have been raised about who chooses to become certified through these routes. What qualifications and experiences do they bring to the profession that may not be found in candidates from traditional preparation programs? In what schools do they serve during their tenure in their programs? How long do they stay in the profession? Given their backgrounds and qualifications, are they any more likely to commit to teaching as a profession than those from traditional programs? Attempts to answer these questions have typically been addressed in studies of the teacher labor market or in descriptive studies of AC programs themselves. The findings of these studies have focused on the demographic characteristics of teachers and on their educational qualifications or personal backgrounds. Although these studies have been important in describing how AC programs have changed the pool of candidates, they have not been able to go beyond surface-level descriptions of this population.
The problem is twofold. First, the focus on single variables that characterize AC candidates, such as race, sex, tests scores on subject-matter exams, colleges attended, and so on, ignores the fact that single group characteristics do not capture a person as a whole. That is, to understand who chooses to become a teacher through AC programs, an approach is needed that can describe the constellation of factors that are relevant to the decisions individuals make to enter careers. By identifying these constellations of factors, we begin to describe the persons in AC programs. Second, the outcomes of professional preparation are dependent on the developmental process itself. Development is always contextualized within specific environments for practice (Cole, 1996). Environments have both spatial and temporal dimensions. Development results from an interaction between persons and their environments through activities that unfold over time (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1995). In sum, to understand the outcomes of AC preparation, we need to examine the interactions between the types of individuals who choose these programs and the environments in which they make and realize these choices. In this article, we argue for adopting an ecological approach, one that is derived from studies of development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and that embeds developmental processes within the cultural and historical environments in which they unfold (Cole, 1996). We used this approach in a large-scale study of individuals enrolled in California’s teacher internship program. The central goals of this study were to characterize the individuals who are prepared through the internship program, to track their progress through the programs, and to ascertain who and how many of these people actually complete their programs and commit to teaching as a career. In this article, we focus on how we developed typological profiles of the interns by using an ecological model of development. We adopted methodological approaches proposed by developmental psychologists working within the ecological tradition. We recognize that this approach is unlike previous studies of the teacher labor market, which have assumed that teachers’ career decisions are based on self-interested analyses of the costs and benefits of entering and remaining in the profession or of working in particular schools (Lankforth, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002; Murnane & Olsen, 1990). Our approach also differs from large-scale psychological studies of teacher job satisfaction or career motivations that have focused on individual background variables, attitudes, or workplace factors that transcend the particulars of individuals’ lives and the social and cultural environments in which teachers work (DeLong, 1987; Hall, Pearson, & Carroll, 1992; Ma & Macmillan, 1999). By integrating personal and individual factors with the larger sociocultural environment in which choices are made, we can acquire a fuller picture of how socialization into a profession is tied to the particular life histories and emotional commitments from which novices enter teaching. The approach adopted in this study is closer in methodological approach to small-scale studies of teacher biographies that have provided insights into the connections between previous life experiences and the commitments that drive individuals to choose teaching as a profession (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2005; Foster, 1997; Galindo, Aragón, & Underhill, 1996). This article is divided into four major sections. In the first section, we briefly describe AC programs in California, locating them within the specific policy and cultural environments in which they arose. The second section reviews developmental and sociological theories that were used to frame a large-scale study of teacher
interns in California. The third section describes the study itself, the specific methodological approach that was used, and the profiles of California’s interns we derived from this approach. The final section considers how the ecological, developmental approach we adopted can be applied to future analyses of the study’s data. These future analyses are directed at identifying the combination of personal and environmental factors that may predict interns’ successful completion of their credentialing programs and subsequent employment as teachers in hard-to-staff schools. Alternative Teacher Certification in California California has used alternative pathways to certification for the past 10 years to alleviate shortages in the teacher labor force. It adopted an internship model as the type of alternative pathway that the state funds and accredits. Internship programs may be run exclusively by districts (District Intern programs) or as partnerships between universities and districts. California also offers one distance-learning intern program through the California State University system: CalState Teach. With the exception of a relatively new “blended” undergraduate option, all teacher preparation programs in California, traditional or alternative, are postbaccalaureate. In acquiring state accreditation, internship programs must meet the same standards as traditional, university-based programs. The key differences between traditional and internship programs in California are that interns must be 1. fully employed as teachers of record while concurrently enrolled and participating in a teacher preparation program and 2. provided with mentors who can support them during their entire internship experience. Moreover, the internship programs are much more adaptable to fluctuations in the labor market. When the demand for elementary school teachers rapidly increased as a result of California’s class-size reduction legislation, the intern programs responded by admitting and preparing large numbers of elementary candidates. As children progressed through the system and enrollments dropped in elementary schools, there was a concomitant rise in the numbers of secondary candidates prepared through intern programs (Chin & Asera, 2005; McKibbin, 2001). The demand for special education teachers led programs already authorized to prepare special education teachers to increase their numbers and for new programs to emerge and acquire state authorization for these credentials. The full immersion of interns into schools and their roles as teachers of record compelled us to adopt a theoretical framework that would capture the complexities of these situations for learning. In particular, it meant that the theory had to account for interactions between the learners and their environment and the effects these interactions might have on the learners’ future professional plans. An ecological approach seemed to provide the best set of perspectives from which to view teacher development within internship programs. Ecological Models of Development For our study of alternatively certified teachers, we drew on three perspectives on human development that fit within an ecological framework: Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1995) ecology of human MARCH 2007
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development and its focus on the reciprocity between four nested environmental structures, Elder’s (1995) life-course studies, and Cole’s (1996) cultural-historical approach. The starting assumption for each of these perspectives is that development results from interactions among individuals, their activities, and their environment. Each perspective grapples with the difficulties in describing the complex activities in which development happens. Persons are the units of analysis. A focus on persons means taking into account individual life histories and situating people’s lives within the larger sociocultural environment in which their thinking is shaped. These ecological models consider the material circumstances in which development takes place, seeing development as a dialectical process. In this dialectic, the material world shapes thinking and being while in turn being continuously transformed through human activities and agency. One of the key intellectual problems presented by an ecological model is how to integrate microlevel analyses with macrolevel perspectives. That is, how do you locate and situate persons within the larger sociocultural landscape in which they develop? It is a problem that geographers have in choosing the level of granularity for their maps and one that plagues social scientists trying to merge disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology that typically work at different levels of specificity when looking at the human condition.
Reciprocity and Development Bronfenbrenner (1979) captured the complexity of the reciprocity between human activity and contexts for development in his delineation of four nested structures within the ecological environment: a microsystem, the local setting in which interpersonal relations are enacted; a mesosystem, the interrelationships among two or more settings; an exosystem, settings outside of the immediate environment for development that can affect individuals within a microsystem; and a macrosystem, the norms and rules that govern the interactions among people within each system and the interrelationships among the different systems. The macrosystem describes key aspects of a culture. We can map each of Bronfenbrenner’s structures onto the process of teacher development within AC programs. The microsystem encompasses the program in which candidates are prepared, the local schools in which they work, and the persons, objects, and resources they encounter in each of these settings. The mesosystem describes the interactions between the programs and the school sites, as well as any other settings in which preparation takes place (e.g., the workspaces, offices, and homes where teacher interns may meet with significant others, such as mentors, who play roles in their development). The exosystem consists of the policies and legislation that created the AC programs, changes to existing institutions (namely, universities and school districts) that house them, and the bureaucratic infrastructure that supports and monitors them. Because each structure is nested within the others, human activity within one structure reverberates throughout the other structures. Activities within local sites affect individual development within those sites. These activities also affect the meso- and exosystems through their cumulative effects. The civil rights movement of the 1960s exemplified how local activities can be transformed into broad social movements that eventually change society’s consciousness. During the struggle for civil rights, 76
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changes to the exosystem were a response to pressure from activities within the microsystem. In turn, legislation and policy, parts of the exosystem, pushed society to consider issues about race and racial oppression that were not previously part of the national dialogue. The fact that we continue to be embroiled in debates about race and racism shows the slow nature of fundamental change to social consciousness. The idea of reciprocity, then, allows us to consider how activity within one structure can shape the thinking and activity of individuals within another structure. When policy makers in California instituted teacher internship programs as a legal pathway to certification, it legitimated ideas about teacher licensure that were already part of the public discourse. This change in licensure laws created incentives for entering teaching that made entry more attractive for people who might otherwise not have considered teaching as a career. People’s motivations for choosing teaching and for entering AC programs, then, are embedded or situated within the particular policy context that allowed for alternative pathways.
Life-Course Studies and the Temporal Mapping of Development Life-course studies attend to the temporal dimension of development. At the microlevel, time is measured in terms of people’s life histories and marked by key transition points, such as those related to the choice or entry into a career. These transition points are the result of conscious decisions people make in response to their environments. They are based on how they interpret their situations and are shaped by their individual life histories and dispositions (Elder, 1995). The tradition of examining autobiographies and life histories of teachers through qualitative studies of individuals is well established (Ball & Goodson, 1985; Clandinin & Connelly, 1990). However, large-scale studies of teachers and their career choices have tended to ignore personal histories because of the difficulties in using standardized instruments to probe what is by nature individualistic, particularistic, and dependent on subjective interpretations of the subjects’ statements. Although we acknowledge the difficulties in capturing the nuances of individual lives through surveys, we designed surveys that included variables that locate interns within their life courses. Markers of experience that situate candidates temporally included variables such as their age at entry into the programs, the years in which the interns earned their bachelor’s degrees, and the number of years between the time they earned their bachelor’s degrees and when they entered the internship programs. What is captured here for the individual is a view of where they were in their lives at the points at which they chose to enter teaching. However, AC candidates enter these programs at different points in their life histories. They do not all belong to the same age cohort. In fact, there is wide variability in the ages for people choosing to become teachers (Humphrey & Wechsler, 2005). “Timing” for career transitions varies for the entire population of AC candidates. As Elder (1995) argued, The timing of encounters with major environmental change in a person’s life has much to do with the goodness of fit between lives and new circumstances. . . . The effects of a particular social change will vary in type and relative influence across the life course and thus points
to the potential complexity of interactions among historical, social, psychological, and biological factors. (pp. 114–115)
To understand the long-term consequences of the choices individuals make in becoming teachers through AC programs, we need to situate candidates not just within their specific life courses but also within the timing of their lives. For example, candidates who come to teaching as a second career may differ in their motivations for entering the profession from those who choose it as a first career. At the macrolevel, we need to consider historical trends in how society views public schools. People entering teaching today do so at a time when there has been a great deal of attention paid to the work schools must do to support children and families in the absence of the social safety nets that local, state, and the federal government once provided. They are also aware of the changes in American families and their impact on children’s lives. Schools are seen as sites at which individuals can make a significant impact on children’s lives. We might ask, to what extent is Lortie’s (1975) service theme interpreted differently by the interns because of changes in schools’ functions? In Lortie’s original conceptualization, “teaching as service is more likely to appeal to people who approve of prevailing practice than to those who are critical of it” (p. 29). For the interns, we might ask, to what extent is the interpretation of service linked to reform rather than maintaining the status quo? In other words, the motivations or attractors described by Lortie and used in many studies of teachers’ career choices may need to be reinterpreted in light of changes in society’s interpretation of what schools do or should do. A Person-Oriented Methodology for Studying AC Candidates Large-scale studies of the teacher labor force have used a variable-oriented approach to determine factors that influence teachers to enter or stay in the workforce (Ingersoll, 1997; Murnane, Singer, Willett, Kempe, & Olsen, 1991). That is, variables are the focus of interest. Demographic variables are commonly used to describe AC candidates. Race or ethnicity, age, gender, and credential specialization variables are often used to compare AC candidates with those prepared through traditional programs. Although the early studies provided some insight into the changing pool of AC candidates, they did little to illuminate who actually enters AC programs. Nor can a focus on demographic variables alone explain how career choices are related to people’s life histories and where they are in their lives (Martin & Shoho, 2000; McKibbin, 1995; Shen, 1998). To create more complex portraits of AC candidates, we chose a methodological approach that enabled us to situate individuals within specific points in their life histories in particular environments for learning (the microsystem) and to explore the motivations that propelled them into teaching as a career within a specific policy environment (the exosystem). Our unit of analysis was the situated individual. To situate individuals within their life histories, we collected data from interns enrolled in 30 of California’s more than 84 teacher internship programs during 2001–2004. The number of programs in existence during those years was not stable. Programs came into and went out of existence depending on local labor market conditions. When there was no demand for interns in specific locations, the programs admitted no candidates during
particular years. It was also the case that not all programs hired dedicated staffs to maintain programs from year to year. However, the programs recruited for our study were those with some history and that had fairly stable enrollment figures. Four Web-based surveys were designed and used for the study. Interns completed the first survey when they entered their programs. They completed two other surveys that focused on the schools at which they worked, the students they taught, and their mentors while they were in their programs, typically sometime within the first 5 or 6 months in which they were enrolled in their programs. They completed a fourth survey within the last month of completing their programs. The programs varied in length. Some were as short as 10 months and others as long as 3 years. The variations were a function of how each individual program designed its curriculum. The only restriction on length was set by state legislation that authorized the creation of the internship programs. One program was granted special permission to offer a 3-year program because it embedded the required beginning induction process into its internship program. This report focuses on the analysis of data from the first survey only. The first survey provides the richest set of data on the interns’ life histories and motivations for entering teaching. There are limitations inherent in the use of survey data. Surveys and selfreports cannot be interpreted as “true” facts about an individual or a situation. They are, by their very nature, the individuals’ interpretations of their own lives and situations. Given that limitation, the surveys focus on the individuals’ reports about their life experiences, perceptions of their environments, and beliefs and attitudes about teaching and attending AC programs. The next section describes the analytic strategies used to situate individuals within their life spans and the ways in which choices about preparation and pathways are associated with individual life situations and the motivations shaped by the policy environments in which AC programs exist. For the purposes of this article, we focus our attention on just the analysis of the interns’ life histories to demonstrate how we applied a personoriented, ecological framework to a large-scale study.
Creating Profiles of California Teacher Interns A common way to operationalize a person-oriented approach is to look for relevant characteristics that can be combined to develop typological profiles. Cluster analysis is one method that combines similar characteristics that groups of people possess. For the interns, we were interested in creating profiles on the basis of similarities in their life histories and situations, their family backgrounds, and their motivations for entering teaching as a career. The first survey in our study collected extensive data on the interns’ educational and personal backgrounds, their choices of programs and credential specializations, and their past experiences working with youth. To situate individuals within their life histories, we identified the following variables as ones that are markers of significant life events or time-sensitive activities that locate individuals within their life spans: the highest degrees earned by the interns, the number of years between their earning bachelor’s degrees and entering the intern programs, the salaries earned prior to their entering the intern programs, their parental status, and their previous experiences working with young people. MARCH 2007
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The selection of these variables for the cluster analysis was informed by the life-course approach described in the previous discussion about the theoretical framework. Completing degree programs and becoming parents are markers of key transition points in people’s lives. Previous occupations represented by salaries act as a proxy for career pathways. Although there is no necessary relationship between salary and career stability, we reasoned that people moving from high-paying careers to teaching are at different points in their career trajectories than those who may be working in lowpaid, short-term, service-oriented jobs, the majority of the occupations that were associated with lower salary ranges in our sample population. The presence or absence of previous experience with young people was used as an indicator of some “fit” between persons and their desire to work in a field in which the majority of their time is spent working with youth. However, decisions to enter careers are also shaped by formative environmental factors, such as family background (BeauboeufLafontant, 2005; Foster, 1997; Galindo et al., 1996; King, 1993). We included in our analysis variables about the interns’ families that were related to their career aspirations. These variables were the highest level of education for the interns’ parents and whether other members of their families were teachers or had been teachers. To complete the profiles, we included factors addressing the interns’ motivations for choosing teaching as a career and their reasons for choosing the AC pathway as well as their specific AC programs. As we argued in the previous section of this article, career motivations are context sensitive. The attractors to teaching identified by Lortie (1975) over 30 years ago may still be valid, but how people interpret those attractors has changed in response to shifts in society’s perceptions about teachers and schools and to a policy environment that created and supports the existence of AC programs. That is, changes in the exosystem, the shifts in policy and societal perceptions about teachers and teaching, can manifest themselves in how people conceptualize their motivations for entering teaching through AC programs. Thus, we included items that addressed not just why individuals chose to become teachers but why they chose to enter teaching through the AC route and why they chose specific AC programs, given that many had access to more than one program. The items dealing with motivation were presented as three different groups of questions. Motivation items were adopted from previous surveys of teacher motivations and modified after testing of these items with interns not included in the sample (Daniel, 1991; Joseph & Green, 1986; Lortie, 1975). Interns were asked to rate how important each reason was in their decision making. A 5-point, Likert-type scale was used, ranging from important to unimportant. The first group consisted of 15 items that addressed interns’ motivations for choosing the AC route to credentialing. The second group dealt with their reasons for choosing specific AC programs. The last group of motivation items asked about their reasons for entering teaching as a career. Factor analyses using varimax rotation were done to confirm the major conceptual categories used in the design of the survey. Table 1 displays the factors that were extracted from each set of questions and provides a brief description of each factor. The factors that emerged from the items dealing with career choice align with many of the attractors Lortie (1975) described. 78
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However, two differences emerged. The interpersonal dimension that Lortie found to be an important attractor (i.e., the desire to work with young people specifically and/or to work with people in general) was not rated as strongly as service. It is likely that the interns who identified the service items as important to their choice of career were like Lortie’s teachers in that they perceived that teaching is valuable because of its inherent moral worth. Unlike the sample of teachers from the National Education Association survey that Lortie described, a much larger percentage of the interns indicated that service was the driving reason for their entering teaching. In the National Education Association survey, the largest percentage of teachers indicating that service was a primary attractor was 32%. More than 70% of the interns identified service as an important reason for becoming a teacher. The service factor alone accounted for 30.3% of the variance for all the items related to why people chose teaching as a career. The interns also expressed a strong desire to serve to reform schools and to create greater opportunities for young people. This interpretation of the mission of teaching was revealed in the large percentage of candidates who rated the following reasons as important or somewhat important to their decision making. Table 2 displays the service items that were rated as important by a majority of the interns. Of the 6,367 candidates who visited the survey’s website, 4,239 (67%) completed the majority of the questions in the survey that focused on the interns’ background. The final sample (n = 1,862) used to construct the profiles, however, was a smaller subset of the total number of respondents because the analysis automatically excluded subjects with missing responses in any of the variables. The smaller subset used for the profiles was not demographically different from the population of interns who completed our survey. In fact, the demographic characteristics of the interns in our study and all interns enrolled in California’s programs are similar. Table 3 displays the demographic characteristics of all interns in the state, the interns who participated in our study, and those who were used to construct the profiles. A two-step cluster analysis was run using the educational background, life situation, family background, and motivational factor variables described above. Cluster analysis attempts to identify homogeneous subgroups of cases in a population by identifying a set of groups that minimizes within-group variation and maximizes between-group variation. A two-step cluster analysis groups cases into preclusters, which are treated as single cases. Standard hierarchical clustering is then applied to the preclusters in the second step. In line with the person-oriented approach used to develop the profiles, we chose to exclude demographic variables for gender and race or ethnicity in running the cluster analyses. It is not that factors such as gender and race or ethnicity are unimportant. In fact, in developing the profiles, we ran chi-square tests of association between the demographic variables and each cluster that emerged. The finding that race or ethnicity and gender were associated with specific profiles but not others suggests an associative but not deterministic relationship between gender and race or ethnicity with career decisions made at different points in an individual’s life course. We also reasoned that race or ethnicity and gender, although important dimensions of an individual’s makeup, are also categories of being that individuals interpret. That is, an individual’s interpretation of his or her gender and racial or ethnic identity
Table 1 Motivational Factors by Question Groups Question Group Choosing AC pathway (15 items)
Factors by Question Groups Learn by doing Confidence
Efficiency and convenience Immediacy
Choosing a specific program (19 items)
Program compatibility
Workplace-program connection
Institutional attractivenessa Proximitya Choosing teaching as a career (31 items)
Service
Material benefits
Intellectual and personal fulfillment Teaching as tradition
Description The perception that teaching can best be learned by doing it The extent to which interns feel confidence in their ability to be teachers because of their command of their subject matter and their previous experiences with young people AC programs are seen as an efficient way to obtain credentials, and the location and scheduling of course work are convenient for the interns Expressed desire to begin work in classrooms with an associated need to earn a living while in credentialing programs The extent to which an individual program’s mission and the communities it serves align with the intern’s aims and desires to work in those communities Interns’ perceptions about the linkages between specific AC programs and the schools, communities, or workplaces in which the interns were already living and/or working Interns’ desire to attend the institutions or work in the districts where programs are located Geographical proximity of programs to interns’ homes or previous workplaces Teaching as service to young people or specific communities, to improve education, and to ensure educational access to all children Alignment of teacher’s work schedule with individual’s lifestyle; attractions due to perceived job security and benefits Perception that teaching is intellectually stimulating and allows for creativity Describes influence that others may have had in shaping career choice and the attractions of traditional views of a teacher’s role
Percentage of Variance Explained 27 9
8
7
28
9
7 6 30
13
5 4
Note: AC = alternative certification. a These two factors were not included in the cluster analysis to build the profiles because they did not contribute to any changes in the cluster centers when they were initially added to the analysis.
affects how and to what extent gender and race or ethnicity influence decision making. These interpretations are sensitive to generational differences (see e.g., Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2005; Foster, 1997; Galindo et al., 1996; Gordon, 2005). For example, people of color who grew up during the struggle for civil rights may interpret their racial or ethnic identities differently from those for whom the struggle is but a part of history. Clark and Flores (2001) found that perceptions of ethnic identity in Latino teachers were far more heterogeneous than not. Even the small but growing number of people who identify themselves in multiple racial or ethnic categories (3% in our sample population) or as “other” and thus outside of standard race and ethnicity classifications reveals the extent to which the interpretation of one’s racial or ethnic identity has changed over time. The same reasoning can be applied to how one’s gender may be interpreted on the basis of one’s previous life experiences. The
fact that teaching is no longer one of the few professions open to women makes women’s decisions to enter teaching perhaps less dependent on the fact that they are female and thus have fewer career choices. The profiles described in the next section were developed by combining the results from the cluster analysis with the chi-square tests of association with demographic variables. The results are descriptions of types of persons who choose to enter teaching through the teaching internship pathway to certification.
Description of the Intern Profiles Six distinct clusters emerged from the cluster analysis. To distinguish between the different clusters, the research team designated a name for each cluster. These names were designed to describe the configuration of background characteristics and motivational orientations that were associated with specific life situations. That MARCH 2007
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Table 2 Intern Responses to Service Factor Survey Items
Survey Item Teaching gives me an opportunity to help students gain a sense of achievement and self-worth. I want to make a difference. I want to ensure that students of all backgrounds can get a good education. Teaching lets me perform a valuable service for society. I wanted to give something back to my community. I would like to improve the schools in my community.
Percentage of Interns Rating Item as Important (n = 4,050) 80
79 78
72 60 53
is, each cluster’s name represents a profile of the types of persons who belong to each cluster group. Below is a description of each of the clusters and the percentage of the sample population each of the groups represents. They are presented in descending order by size. Compatible Lifestylists (23%). As the name implies, those in this group were motivated by the perception that teaching was a career that would be compatible with their lifestyles. They liked the idea that teaching would allow them to be home with their children and families in the evenings and during holidays. They found attractive the security and benefits associated with employment in public schools. Like three other groups, they wanted to work in jobs in which they would feel personally and intellectually fulfilled. Generally, this group’s members resembled those in the group of romantic idealists in terms of life situations, but they differed from the romantic idealists in that no one in their families was or had been a teacher, and fewer of them reported having worked with young people prior to being interns. Their perceptions about the realities of teaching, as expressed in their motivation to seek compatible lifestyles, seemed to be based more on perceptions of how teachers live rather than the reality of their lives. With a mean age of 31.3 years, they were slightly older than the romantic idealists and younger than the career explorers. All racial and ethnic groups were represented in this profile, but Whites were significantly overrepresented and Latinos underrepresented. Working-Class Activists (18%). As the second largest group of interns, those in this group differed significantly from the others along a number of motivational dimensions and primarily because they may have been the first in their families to go to college. None of their parents had more than a high school education. They were within 5 years of having completed bachelor’s degrees before beginning the intern programs and were, on average, 34.0 years of age. They were motivated to teach because they felt a strong sense of service. In particular, they expressed the most 80
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Table 3 Demographic Characteristics of California’s Interns: Total Population Versus Study Population and Sample for Profile
Demographic Mean age (years) Sex Female Male Race White Latino/a African American Asian Multiple American Indian Other No response Credential sought Elementary Secondary Special education
All California Sample Interns Used for Enrolled Study Profile in 2004a Participants Analysis (N = 8,881) (n = 4,239) (n = 1,862) 34.5
35.9
34.3
65% 35%
64% 36%
64% 36%
48% 25% 9% 8% 1% .8% 3% 5%
47% 24% 9% 9% 3% .6% 1% 7%
50% 24% 7% 9% 3% .5% 1% 7%
43% 27% 29%
38% 33% 28%
40% 33% 26%
Note. Percentages may not total 100% because of rounding. aThe final census for interns in 2004 provides a close approximation of the total number of interns enrolled during the 3 years in which we collected data on the interns for our study.
positive responses to the statements about wanting to reform schools or serve in certain communities as their motivations for wanting to become teachers. They were also looking for a career that would be compatible with their lifestyles and one that they would find personally and intellectually fulfilling. They found attractive the traditional view of what teachers do but were less confident than other groups about their subject matter knowledge and their ability to work with young people. They chose the internship programs because they needed to earn a living while seeking their credentials. Sixty-eight percent of them had worked in schools prior to their entering the internship programs, with many of this group employed on emergency permits or as preinterns.1 Perhaps because of their previous experience in schools, they were pragmatic in their view that teaching can best be learned by doing it. Working-class activists were more likely to be Latino/a and were seeking elementary credentials, especially ones that authorized them to teach in bilingual classrooms (cf. Galindo et al., 1996; Su, 1996) Romantic Idealists (17%). Those in this group were the youngest, having been out of college only 3.3 years. Their mean age was 30.5 years. Their salaries before entering the intern programs were the lowest of all groups, an indication that they were probably not working as teachers on emergency permits prior to entering their AC programs. Although they themselves were the least likely to be parents, the majority (55%) reported having previously worked in some
capacity with young people. They tended to come from families in which others were teachers. Like the working-class activists, they were driven by a strong, reform-minded service orientation. They also sought personal and intellectual fulfillment from their jobs. They were least concerned about how teaching would fit their lifestyles and did not indicate that the traditional view of teaching was attractive to them. Of all the groups, the romantic idealists most closely resembled the profile of the stereotypical candidate in a traditional teacher preparation program in that they were more likely to be young and female. Although every racial and ethnic group was represented in the romantic idealists group, African Americans were significantly underrepresented in this group. Followers in the Family Tradition (16%). The one characteristic that marked the members of this group as distinct from all others is that all of them came from families with teachers. This is borne out by the fact that both parents had college degrees. The majority of this group were parents and reported having had extensive experience working with young people. Given their family histories, it is not surprising that their motivations for choosing teaching aligned with a strong desire to serve and a positive view about the traditional role of teachers (authority figures in command of their classrooms who like the performance aspects of teaching). They were highly confident about their abilities to work with young people. They claimed to know their subject matter well and believed that the internships served them by allowing them to learn by doing. Their pragmatic bent in learning to teach aligned with Lortie’s (1975) “apprenticeship of observation,” as they had spent much of their lives observing their parents or family members teach. It is likely that they worked on emergency permits before entering the program. The followers had been out of college about 4.5 years and were closest in age to the working-class activists, whom they resembled in terms of motivations as well. Of all racial and ethnic groups, African Americans were overrepresented in this group (cf. Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2005). Second-Career Seekers (14%). It is often assumed that the majority of AC teachers are people seeking to change careers. However, as our analysis revealed, the second-career seekers constituted less than a fifth of the total population of people seeking to become teachers through AC programs in California. The second-career seekers in this group were the oldest, with a mean age of 47.5. They had been out of college on average for over 22 years. They earned the highest salaries prior to entering the intern programs. As a group, they earned the majority of the graduate degrees reported by all interns and were the only group that included people with doctorates. The majority of this group were not parents, and slightly more than half (52%) reported that they had no previous experience working with young people. They were less likely to have come from families of teachers. They were largely motivated by a drive for personal and intellectual fulfillment and tended to be somewhat confident about their knowledge of their subject areas and ability to work with youth. A higher percentage of this group were White men than would be otherwise expected. Given the relatively high salaries and educational levels of this group, it is not surprising that more of this group was composed of White men. The women in this
group were more far more likely to have chosen to seek credentials in special education. Career Explorers (12%). Those in this group can be best understood in contrast to the other groups and especially in terms of how they differed from the working-class activists. In terms of their motivations for teaching, the career explorers were nearly the mirror opposites of the working-class activists. Neither the drive to serve nor the drive to seek a fulfilling career was reported as a primary reason for their entering teaching. In fact, they responded positively to only one of the motivational factors: that the AC program was an efficient way to obtain a credential. Like the other groups, the majority (69%) reported having worked in schools prior to their entering the internship programs, typically on emergency permits or as preinterns. However, of all groups, they had the least amount of experience working in schools. They were also the group least likely to have worked with young people in any capacity before starting their internship programs. At the time this group entered their internship programs, it is likely that they had already attempted other careers, an interpretation supported by the data on their life situations. Like the other groups, except the working-class activists, they came from families in which both parents had attended at least some college. They were approximately the same age as the working-class: activists but had been out of college for a longer period of time. Their previous salaries were second only to the second-career seekers, an indication that their previous careers were typically not low-level service jobs that support people as they transition from college into graduate or professional programs. They were more likely to be male and seeking secondary credentials. Implications for Future Research on AC Candidates The profiles of interns that emerged from our person-oriented approach challenge many of our assumptions about who actually enters AC programs. When AC programs first caught the attention of policy makers, much of the discussion centered on the development of programs that would attract people seeking greater fulfillment through service, most notably those who felt that they could financially afford to make the leap from high-paying jobs to the lower paying job of teaching, those who had served in the military and could make the transition to civilian careers through programs such as Troops to Teachers, or parents (mainly mothers) who, having raised families, would want to enter the workforce through teaching. What we see from our profiles is a picture that supports some of beginning assumptions about AC candidates (i.e., that many of them feel driven to serve but define service in many different ways) while contradicting others (i.e., that the majority of AC candidates are truly second-career seekers). The focus on persons also begins to answer some of the questions raised about the relationship between teacher demographics, the recruitment of teachers, and the expansion of the pool of candidates from underrepresented groups (Zumwalt & Craig, 2005). By focusing on clusters of variables that define persons rather than single demographic variables, we gain insight into why certain underrepresented groups may choose to enter teaching. For example, one interpretation about the overrepresentation of Latinos/as in the working-class activists group is that this group MARCH 2007
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reflects the typical educational and career progression followed by many immigrant groups. Teaching has traditionally been a way for working-class people to enter the middle class (Lanier & Little, 1986). However, like other teachers of color, their motivations for entering teaching transcend their desire to progress socially or economically. They are strongly motivated by their beliefs about the need to reform schools, beliefs no doubt shaped by their observations about and/or experiences as pupils in K–12 schools that were most likely underfunded and poorly staffed. They feel driven to become teachers because they want to rectify educational inequities they have experienced or perceived (cf. Galindo et al., 1996). When we used race and ethnicity factors as the sole variable of interest, we were unable to “see” the workingclass activists as a distinct group within the population of Latino/a interns, many of whom populated the other profiles as well . It is only by looking beyond race or ethnicity as a single, significant variable that we could actually see how race or ethnicity and life course are implicated in people’s career decisions. Diversifying the teacher labor force has been one of the most pressing goals in the preparation of new teachers and a major impetus behind the drive to create AC programs. To recruit people of color for teaching, policy makers and teacher educators will need to look beyond simple demographics that often mask a more complex set of factors guiding people’s decision making. By doing so, they may be more successful in designing AC programs that recruit and serve the populations that are most needed as teachers in our schools. Designers of teacher education programs will also need to consider how best to support people of color who do choose to enter teaching through AC routes. It is not enough to get them in the door; it is also necessary to provide them with support to help them complete their programs, acquire the competencies needed to teach in the settings in which they are most likely to choose to teach, and overcome some of the institutional barriers that typically prevent teachers of color from entering or staying in teaching (Clark & Flores, 2001; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1994). Throughout this article, we have argued for a nonessentialist approach to understanding who enters teaching through AC programs by eschewing the variable-oriented methods that are dominant in many of the previous studies of AC candidates. Although the profiles must, by necessity, reduce some of the complexities of persons, we are not interested in limiting our study to the development of a typology. Instead, we see these findings as the first step toward the development of a more complex, interactive, and thus ecological approach to understanding teacher labor markets and one pathway, AC programs, through which novices are socialized into the teaching profession. The next steps in our study will focus on how these profiles can be used to develop a more comprehensive view of the progress that AC candidates make through their programs. This more complete picture can be obtained only when we consider how persons situated in specific times in their own lives with motivations that are linked to their life histories progress through their AC programs within specific settings nested in larger sociopolitical and organizational contexts for learning to teach. We will begin the next phase in our study by examining the specific contexts in which interns learn to teach: their K–12 schools.
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Schools are part of the microsystem in which personal life histories come into contact with environmental factors, including other teachers who socialize them into the profession and working conditions that shape interns’ beliefs, attitudes, and practices. We have data on the schools at which interns with previous teaching experience have worked as well as the positions they held. We also collected data on the schools at which interns were placed and the assignments they held. These data include not only demographic and organizational-level data on schools and the students but also the interns’ perceptions and interpretations of these environments for work. These data allow us to construct more nuanced descriptions of the microsystems in which new teachers are first socialized into the profession. Findings from these analyses will help us answer questions about the types of school environments that are likely to lead to higher rates of program completion for certain types of interns. Or they may help us consider how to do a better job of placing novices in environments in which they are more likely to thrive instead of fail. If we are serious about filling our schools with teachers who are committed to serving all children, especially those with the greatest needs, we need a better understanding of the persons entering the profession, the commitments and dispositions they bring, and how they as persons engaged with other teachers and students interpret and make sense of their initial experiences in schools, the settings in which many of their beliefs and attitudes are first established. That is, solutions to complex problems, such as the recruitment of qualified candidates to the teaching profession, require more rather than less subtle and complicated methodological approaches. NOTES
This project would not have been possible without the cooperation and support of the 30 California alternative certification (AC) program directors, Michael McKibbin, and members of the California Commission for Teacher Credentialing. Barry D. Floyd played an important role in designing the surveys and our information system. We are in debt to Chun-Mei Zhao and Lloyd Bond of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance of Teaching and Learning for their insights and advice about the use of cluster analyses to develop typological profiles. Finally, we wish to thank Educational Researcher editor Michèle Foster and the anonymous reviewers who provided critical and valuable feedback on earlier drafts. This study was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Education. 1Previously funded by the state, the preintern programs were designed to help candidates with BAs who did not meet requirements for subjectmatter competency acquire subject-matter expertise. Preinterns were allowed to work in schools while taking the additional courses needed to meet subject-matter competency by either passing the appropriate subjectmatter test or by meeting the requirements for a state-approved subjectmatter waiver program. The state stopped funding the preintern programs in 2002. REFERENCES
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AUTHORS
ELAINE CHIN is the chair of the Teacher Education Division in the College of Education at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, 1 Grand Avenue, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407; echin@calpoly .edu. Her areas of special interest are teacher education, professional socialization, and alternative certification programs and policies. JOHN W. YOUNG is a senior research scientist in the Center for Validity Research at the Educational Testing Service, Mail Stop 10-R, Princeton, NJ 08541;
[email protected]. His research interests include test validity and fairness.
Manuscript received January 31, 2006 Revisions received May 31, 2006, August 24, 2006, and September 8, 2006 Accepted September 10, 2006
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