This paper explores the disconnect between face-to-face and online instructors with respect to professional teaching dispositions and addresses why educators should be as aware of their teaching dispositions. The assumption is often made that good Internet connectivity, high quality equipment, and solid content knowledge are all that is needed for instructors to be effective in the online classroom, yet research has shown that instructors must also possess strong professional teaching dispositions to truly be effective educators. With an ever-increasing number of students enrolled in online courses, institutions need to identify what is effective online teaching and the professional teaching dispositions one needs to be an effective educator in online environments. Professional teaching dispositions are defined as those professional attitudes, values and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities and are guided by beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, and honesty.
There is a national conversation about a secondary teacher shortage and the lack of qualified teachers in the classroom. Over recent years, there has been a rise in the number of alternatively certified teachers to fill these positions. This is particularly true in the field of career and technical education. However, there is a debate on whether an alternatively certified teacher is as effective as a traditionally certified teacher. The level of preparedness has been identified as a critical factor in teacher effectiveness. This study looks at the differences in perceived preparedness of early career technology and engineering education teachers to determine if there is a difference between alternatively and traditionally certified teachers. The Schools and Staffing Survey Teacher Questionnaire was used as a generalizable national dataset. The results show that there is no statistically significant difference in the level of perceived preparedness of early career alternatively and traditionally certified technology and engineering education teachers. One construct within preparedness, behavior management, was statistically significant for traditionally certified teachers. By better understanding the nature of teachers in regard to preparedness and certification type, further research can be conducted to better prepare teachers in the field of technology and engineering education.
Teacher retention in the STEM fields is of national interest. Several factors, such as job satisfaction, classroom control, and school influence have been linked to teachers leaving the profession. By statistically analyzing various questions from the Schools and Staffing Survey Teacher Questionnaire, this study evaluated the current state of how early career mathematics, science, and career and technical education (CTE) teachers perceive their classroom control and influence over school policy. The results show that CTE teachers perceive they have significantly more influence over school policy than mathematics teachers. CTE teachers also reported having significantly more classroom control than both mathematics and science teachers. By understanding the current state of how CTE perceive school influence and classroom control compared to their mathematics and science teacher counterparts, further research can be conducted to address job satisfaction and teacher retention in the CTE fields.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.