Capacity Building to Address the Shortage of Mathematics Teachers in Hawaii

This project aims to serve the national needs of understanding and filling the teacher shortage in secondary mathematics. In particular, it will build capacity to examine systemic issues within and across the teacher workforce pipeline in Hawai‘i. Such issues include influences on the recruitment and education of new mathematics teachers as well as the ongoing professional growth and retention of classroom teachers in high-need schools.

This project involves data sharing, collection, analysis, and interpretation among multiple institutions and organizations working collaboratively to address the critical shortage of mathematics teachers in Hawai‘i. It seeks to develop fuller answers to the following questions: What keeps promising individuals from pursuing teaching careers? What barriers or hurdles do aspiring teachers face? What impedes teachers from having long and successful careers in high-need schools and classrooms?

This project at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa includes a strategic partnership among all three university campuses (University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu; University of Hawai‘i Hilo) and two community colleges in the University of Hawai‘i System (Leeward Community College and Kap‘iolani Community College). It also features partnerships with the Hawai‘i State Department of Education, which operates all public schools in the state, as well as with the Hawai‘i Data eXchange Partnership, a collaborative that manages data from Hawai‘i’s education and workforce sectors.

Project goals include carrying out cross-institutional research to inform efforts to address Hawai‘i’s mathematics teacher shortage, develop partnerships and engagement for these efforts, and build/refine data collection, sharing, and reuse for these purposes. The project will carry out quantitative and qualitative analyses of multiple data sources, including program documents, secondary sources, and new survey and interview data.

The intellectual merit of the project entails advancing knowledge about the mathematics teacher shortage in Hawai‘i. It will offer a research foundation to: design approaches for engaging STEM college students and attracting them into teaching careers; address challenges that aspiring mathematics teachers may face when trying to enter and complete teacher education programs; and better support teachers and administrators at high-need schools.

The broader impacts of this project include development of data collection and reuse systems, together with analytic approaches, that will allow stakeholders to look across the teacher workforce pipeline both now and in the future. This Noyce Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts.

It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.