Amber Pineda
1 / 1Teacher experience by subject
The average amount of experience in teachers also varies from subject to subject. On the lower side, 60.6% of Vocational/Technical teachers and 63.3% of Arts and Music teachers have over 10 years of experience. On the higher end, 70% of Health and Physical Education teachers and 67.5% of Foreign Language teachers have this same tenure.
When looking at these subjects – Arts and Music, English or Language Arts, Foreign Languages, Health and Physical Education, Mathematics and Computer Science, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Special Education, and Vocational/Technical - as a composite, 65.4% of all teachers have 10 or more years of experience.
Teacher experience and student success
There's a positive correlation between the length of a teacher's career and the outcomes of their students, but what drives this? One possibility is the level of exposure a teacher had to effective professional development opportunities. That is, the longer a teacher teaches, the more professional development they will experience.
EducationWeek defines professional development for teachers as "any kind of ongoing learning opportunity for teachers and other education personnel."
A report from InsideHigherEd explored a study conducted by the Association of College and University Educators. This study involved over 570 members from 10 institutions who participated in a professional development course on effective teaching practices. These institutions include California State University, Northridge; the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Georgia Southern University, and the University of Houston.
Educators who completed a professional development course on effective teaching practices experienced an increase in their overall self-efficacy and growth mindset, with higher perceptions of their teaching improvement behaviors and teaching enthusiasm.
Students of educators who completed a professional development course on effective teaching practices could more confidently participate in class, attend office hours, manage their coursework, and meet their deadlines. These students also experienced a significant increase in their own growth mindset.
While the students never experienced the content of this professional development course, these results suggest that the shifts in the faculty's self-belief can influence students.
This story was produced by Teachercertification.com and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.
