Motivations of educators for participating in an authentic astronomy research experience professional development program

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) partners small groups of educators with a research astronomer for a year-long authentic research project. This program aligns well with the characteristics of high-quality professional development (PD) programs and has worked with a total of 103 educators since 2005. In this paper, surveys were explored that were obtained from 74 different educators, at up to four waypoints during the course of 13 months, incorporating data from the class of 2010 through the class of 2017. This paper investigates how participating teachers describe their motivations for participating in NITARP as evidenced in these feedback forms. Analysis of self-reported data allows a mapping onto a continuum ranging from more inward focused to more outward focused; there is a shift from more inward-focused responses to more outward-focused responses. This insight into teacher motivations has implications for how the educators might be supported during their year with the program. This work provides a new way of parametrizing why educators participate in PD programs that require a considerable investment of time. NITARP, since it has many qualities of successful PD, serves as a model for similar PD programs in other STEM subjects. Likewise, the analysis method might also be useful to similarly evaluate other PD programs.

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Figure 1

Number of instances (left axis) and rate (right axis) of each of the five encoding words used to probe the inward or outward facing stance of educators. Students, 370 (40%); teachers, 61 (6.6%); team, 259 (28%); colleagues, 152 (17%); self, 78 (8.5%). Uncertainties as shown correspond to the left axis and assume Poisson counting statistics; fractional uncertainties are $\le 3\%$, again assuming Poisson errors. Students and teachers are more outward focused, and colleagues and self are more inward focused. Students is, by far, the most common word in the encoding.

Figure 2

The metric $s$ (see text). The $y$ axis is, in essence, an assigned teacher number; the teachers have been sorted by $s$ before plotting. Black points are the metric calculated over all instances of that educator for that team ($s_{\text{total}}$); yellow points are the metric calculated from the pre-AAS survey (only available for the 2015 class and later), red points are the post-first-AAS survey (post-AAS1), green points are the summer survey, and blue points are the post-second-AAS survey (post-AAS2). The black points are larger than the colored points to make it clearer when the points are overlaid. Points more to the left reflect a more outward focus in the answers; points more to the right reflect a more inward focus. Every person has at least one survey to mine, so when $s_{\text{total}}$ is exactly 0, it means that the existing (but typically limited) information suggests a balance between inward and outward motivations. However, many surveys are missing or insufficient from the first 4 years, so when $s$ at individual waypoints is 0, it is more often an indication that there is missing information. There are more red points on the far right and more blue points on the far left; see text.

Figure 3

Distribution of the offset in $s$ over the year; $s$ was calculated for each teacher at each waypoint ($s_{\text{waypoint}}$) and subtracted from $s$ calculated over all available data for each teacher ($s_{\text{total}}$). Values $s_{\text{total}}-s_{\text{waypoint}}<0$ indicate points to the right of $s_{\text{total}}$ (e.g., more inward focused at that waypoint than overall), and $s_{\text{total}}-s_{\text{waypoint}}>0$ are points to the left of $s_{\text{total}}$ (e.g., more outward focused at that waypoint than overall). Instances where $s_{\text{waypoint}}=0$, where there is insufficient information to calculate $s$, have been omitted from this analysis. Total numbers of encoded surveys available at each waypoint are noted below each box (16, 42, 62, and 47 for the four waypoints, respectively). Box plots are shown on top of each distribution. The median values move up (teachers become more outward focused) with time during the NITARP year.

Figure 4

The distribution of the fraction of team encoded words at each of the four waypoints. Notation is as in Fig. 3. Significantly more people focus on team-related comments after the summer visit than at any other time.