Teaching Qualifications and Teaching Assignments: How They Influence Teachers' Professional Development Choices
1. Context of the Work
NCLB requires that all classrooms must be staffed with highly qualified teachers, which is defined as a teacher who has full certification or licensure, a college degree, and demonstrated content mastery of the subject he or she teaches. This definition emphasizes content knowledge, but does not require evidence of other components of teaching effectiveness, such as good pedagogy.
One of the goals of the Boston Science Partnership (BSP) is to offer professional development that will advance teachers' qualifications, however teachers make choices regarding the professional development they take for a variety of reasons, and in a complex environment. For example, to be compliant with NCLB in regard to science, administrators have to hire and assign teachers with licensure in the specific content areas of biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering. In this large urban district, where there are shortages of physics teachers and teachers with dual certification in SPED and a science discipline, teachers are often assigned to teach outside of their area of licensure, and their teaching assignments shift from one year to the next. In this context, what factors influence teachers' professional development choices, and how can the Boston Science Partnership be responsive to their changing needs?