TeachSIM Partnership to Support New Teacher Development
TeachSIM has partnered with Richmond Public Schools (RPS) to deliver simulations-based professional development to entry-level teachers on the topic of building classroom community.
Many new teachers are forced to learn “on the job” and as a result begin their careers with weak instructional skills (Atteberry et al., 2015). Many report feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression that contribute to eventual job burnout (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010). Within the first five years of teaching, approximately 50% of teachers leave the profession (Ingersoll, 2003).
This teacher churn ultimately produces negative outcomes for students (Ingersoll, 2001; Papay and Laski, 2018). Students with new teachers also perform significantly worse on standardized achievement tests, compared to more experienced teachers (Clotfelter et al., 2007; Kraft & Papay, 2014).
As such, we need to build a more robust evidence-base about effective and efficient methods for supporting new teacher development and keeping those teachers in the classroom (Grossman, 2008; Levine, 2006). Developing scalable, evidence-based systems for new teacher is the primary goal of this study.
The TeachSIM PD will focus on a set of evidence-based instructional skills known to be challenging for beginning teachers and important for supporting student emotionally and academically (Ball & Forzani, 2008; Pianta & Hamre, 2009):
Building Classroom Community: building a physically and emotionally safe, predictable classroom environment.
Data collection for this study will occur throughout the 2023-2024 academic year.
