The Demographic Transformation of the Teaching Force in the United States

This article summarizes the results of an exploratory research project that investigated what demographic trends and changes have, or have not, occurred in the elementary and secondary teaching force in the U.S. over the past three decades, from 1987 to 2018. Our main data source was the Schools and Staffing Survey and its successor, the National Teacher Principal Survey, collectively the largest and most comprehensive source of data on teachers available in the U.S. These surveys are conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The results show that the teaching force has been, and is, greatly changing; yet, even the most dramatic trends appear to have been little noticed or understood by researchers, policy makers, and the public. This article summarizes seven of the most prominent trends and changes that we found. The U.S. teaching force is: larger; older; less experienced; more female; more diverse, by race/ethnicity; consistent in academic ability; unstable. For each of the trends, we explore two broad questions: 1. What are the reasons for and sources of the trend? 2. What are the implications and consequences of the trend?

Representation of Teacher in Andrea Hirata�s Novel Guru Aini: A Study of Literary Psychology

Novel is one of literary works that is quite enjoyed by people. Novel has an important position in describing the reality of life through its storylines. One of them is Guru Aini novel by Andrea Hirata. The novel, which was just published in 2020, told about a teacher who workedin a remote island in Indonesia. The author's view of the teacher as an educator who could be represented by this literary work is constructed in a novel. Based on this, the study aimed to determine the representation of teachers in the Guru Aini novel by Andrea Hirata. The analysis in the research was conducted through the dimensions of literary psychology. The analysis in this study focused on the role of the teacher as an educator in a literary work. The results in this study indicated that the teacher in the novel Guru Aini by Andrea Hirata was represented in a positively charged construction. In this study, it was found that several teacher representations appeared in the novel, namely the representation of the teacher as an individual status, the representation of the teacher as the status of the teaching force, the representation of the teacher as an educator in the community, the representation of the psychological condition of the teacher, and the representation of the teacher's personality in the novel Guru Aini by Andrea Hirata.

On Leadership: Local unions need to catch up with the times

While firm in his support for the national teachers unions, PDK’s Joshua Starr argues that local unions often stand in the way of positive changes to the teaching profession. Of particular concern, right now, are chapter leaders who refuse to consider changes to rigid “last-in, first-out” rules, which — during fiscal crises — protect the jobs of veteran teachers at the expense of newer hires. In recent years, many districts have made it a priority to diversify the teaching force, Starr notes. If local unions remain inflexible, then pandemic-related layoffs will undo that progress, forcing superintendents to lay off many of the teachers of color they’ve recently hired.

A Momentum-First Approach to Teaching Force in High School

A common conception that students have in mechanics courses is that a force is needed to maintain motion. Our work approaches this problem from a p-prim perspective with a comparison to the historical understanding of force. From a p-prims perspective, momentum is proposed to substitute force as a maintaining agency to motion. By a comparison with history, it is shown that a similar problem occurred in the development of the concept of force, which led to a similar solution to the one proposed in our work. As a result, a teaching plan and activities are prepared to introduce the concept of force through the concept of momentum. In this work, the main activities of the plan are discussed, as well as the results of a preliminary research based on its realization in a classroom.

Introduction to the Special Issue—A Necessary Step in Pursuit of Equity: Developing a Racially/Ethnically Diverse Special Education Teaching Force

This special issue of Remedial and Special Education is a collection of theoretical and empirical research addressing equity in the preparation of a diverse special education teaching force, with a focus on racial/ethnic diversity. The purpose of this special issue is to open a conversation about equity as it pertains to special education teachers, including both students’ equitable access to special education teachers who share their racial/ethnic and/or cultural background and prospective special educators’ equitable access to the profession.