Ingersoll, Richard M., & Strong, Michael. (2011). The impact of induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers: A critical review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 201-233.
I write this annotation during a week that for a number of my most recent former students, as well as for one close family member, is their first week as novice teachers, so they are all on my mind at present, which heightened and framed my reading of this review of 15 studies of the effectiveness of teacher induction programs. I am wishing that all of these new teachers will have every support in place to help them become teachers whose children learn. I also want them to be teachers who find joy and satisfaction in teaching, which in turn leads them to have long and fulfilling careers.
Statistics, some of which are cited in the introduction to this review, suggest that my hopes will probably not be realized for all of my former students. Attrition rates for beginning teachers are high, with high percentages (some studies estimate close to half) leaving teaching within five years. The question is, can induction programs reduce such attrition? Although all of the studies reviewed here were full of flaws, according to Ingersoll and Strong (a type of finding that seems common in today’s literature reviews), it seems that even the flawed evidence points toward a positive effect from participating in induction programs, though the magnitude of the effects seems to depend on the duration and intensity of such programs, and some studies show fewer positive effects for novice teachers working in high-poverty schools. Positive effects found in these studies include longer retention in teaching, better performance on certain kinds of classroom variables and even higher student achievement test scores.
From what I read here, it is clear that learning to teach is not an easy developmental progression, and it makes sense that the more intensive, long-lasting approaches to induction will most likely be better at helping novice teachers to succeed with their students and to stay in teaching. My question is, how good are the induction programs my former students are receiving in their districts? I already know, from talking with a number of them, that the quality and intensity of what their school districts provide varies widely among the many districts that make up the patchwork that we have in the metropolitan area where I live and work. I know some that are receiving intensive programs (mostly in the larger, more affluent districts) and some for whom the supports are almost nonexistent unless these novices proactively seek out and have the luck to find good mentors informally (often the case in small rural districts). For those in the large urban districts with high poverty levels, I know programs are in place, but will they be enough? It seems clear from what I read here that something more, or perhaps also something different, is needed in order to support and retain novice teachers in high-poverty urban districts.
As is often the case with literature reviews such as this, more questions were raised than answers supplied, and more problems were clarified than solutions proposed. I’ll need to go to the reviewed literature to learn more, and with the list of references provided here, I could do that. In addition, I think I am interested also in what the descriptive studies have to say on induction programs, even though those kinds of studies were excluded from this review, which focused on studies involving comparisons and quantitative data. I understand fully the limitations of descriptive studies in terms of inferring causality, but I still would like to hear the voices of novice teachers, their mentors, and other stakeholders as well, to provide an additional descriptive layer alongside the comparison studies. While I am interested in looking further at the studies Ingersoll and Strong included here, I am equally interested in those they excluded.
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