Get the Facts Out: Repairing the Reputation of the Teaching Profession

This project aims to serve the national interest by waging a campaign to increase the number and diversity of STEM teachers in K-12 classrooms. Get the Facts Out (GFO) is a national multi-disciplinary effort to supporting STEM faculty and others in recruiting STEM teachers. It is grounded in evidence that enhancing prospective teachers' knowledge of the profession boosts exploration and enrollment in teacher certification programs. GFO resources and strategies draw from research on student and faculty perceptions; extensive national data on grade 7-12 math, science, and computer science teaching; and comparative data for STEM career paths. The project approach is a radical change in practice, celebrating the positives of the profession, providing much needed balance to the conversation. It emphasizes sharing detailed transparent local data on teacher salaries, benefits, retirement plans, day-to-day responsibilities, retention, and job satisfaction. GFO, an Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) Community and Institutional Transformation Level II project, partners with five national societies and more than 20 universities as study sites. With the potential to significantly reduce the STEM teacher shortage, the project aims to provide high quality, diverse STEM teachers, contributing to the competitiveness of the United States in STEM fields. The project team includes the Colorado School of Mines, the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, the American Association for Employment in Education, the National Council for Women & Information Technology, teacher recruitment and retention specialists, educational researchers, current and former teachers, and more than 20 universities as study sites. Building on previous NSF-funded work, GFO aims to implement and study the effectiveness of nationwide recruitment efforts which should: 1. Improve perceptions of the teaching profession among STEM faculty, teachers, students and their parents by, a) building towards a cultural change, and b) becoming a part of the STEM careers conversation; 2. Support the continued development of the GFO Teacher Recruitment Community (current members represent over 200 institutions) as it matures and becomes self-sustaining; and 3. Increase numbers of STEM majors who enroll in a licensure program. To achieve these goals, the project plans to develop additional resources and strategies aimed to support faculty actively involved in initiatives to shift campus culture, fostering a more positive and accurate perception of the teaching profession; collaborate with national societies to expand upon and improve the representation of the teaching career within their discipline specific careers resources; and provide ongoing support to individuals and organizations involved in recruiting and retaining STEM teachers. The ambitious research arm includes development and testing of all resources; site visits to five institutions per year who are focusing on either cultural change, enrollment, or career education; and the development and validation of two new instruments - the Perceptions of Departmental and Institutional Culture Towards Teaching (PrDICTT) and the Student PrDICTT. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.