A Teaching-Credential Program’s Impact on Recent Graduates
Principal Investigator: Michael Spagna, Professor
Co-Principal Investigators:
Suzanne Scheld, Assistant Professor
Julie Gainsburg, Assistant Professor
Christina von Mayrhauser, Associate Professor
Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, Professor
Our study—A Teaching-Credential Program’s Impact on Recent Graduates—was designed to capture
how newly graduated teachers from CSUN's Department of Secondary Education (SED) teaching-credential
program practiced and talked about their teaching. The study had two specific objectives. The first objective
was to investigate, using behavioral observations of teacher practice, the degree to which newly graduated
alumni from the CSUN Traditional Single-Subject Math Preliminary Credential program were implementing a
set of effective practices taught them at CSUN. The second objective was to explore, using post-observation
interviews coupled with observation and background survey data, the possible circumstances that facilitated or
impeded the implementation of these effective teaching practices. The study involved two main components.
The first: classroom observations of teachers who had graduated from the credential program within the prior
two years. The second: post-observation structured interviews, which were comprised of questions about the
observed lesson and questions about the teacher's background, CSUN learning experiences, and future plans for
professional development and careers. A precursor survey was also administered by mail in advance of the
observations and interviews. Observations and interviews were carried out by an interdisciplinary team
composed of CSUN faculty from education and anthropology. The team established inter-rater reliability on the
instruments used through a series of team calibration sessions. In all, ten teachers were observed and
interviewed once or twice each, for a total of 16 observed lessons and 16 hour-long interviews.
The study found that there appeared to be universally low implementation of the effective teaching practices
among the cohort of new graduates studied, echoing the findings of much prior research, which show low
implementation of “reform-oriented” teaching practices by mathematics teachers at all levels of experience.
Taking these data as a baseline and as information for the secondary education department to consider
programmatic improvements, further study should track future graduates to detect whether changes in the CSUN
credential program translate into improved teaching practice.
This study also found that the nature of the low implementation varied considerably across the cohort. Teachers
had different conceptualizations of teaching practice that suggested varying levels of mastery of pedagogical
content knowledge. There was also considerable variation in how teachers talked about the plethora of factors
and circumstances that affected their practice. While there were some circumstances perceived by most to have
a positive effect on practice (such as working in a well-resourced school setting, having been trained at CSUN to
think critically) and some circumstances widely described as having a negative effect on practice (such as
having not enough time to cover lessons in sufficient depth), many circumstances seemed to hold a double
valence. That is, some teachers perceived certain circumstantial factors (such as the pressure to prepare students
for standards-based state tests) to impede practice while others considered the same factors to facilitate practice.
Preliminary qualitative analysis suggests that their conceptualizations of the facilitative or impeding factors may
have something to do with the levels of mastery of PCK and in particular where they fall on the spectrum of
procedural vs. fundamental knowledge of teaching practices (per Liping Ma.) Further research into the factors
that facilitate or impede new teacher practice could take these initial study findings as a basis for further inquiry
that involves a more in-depth study of pre-cursor knowledge and perceptions that students bring to the CSUN
program and how this knowledge deepens during the ensuing trajectory of professional development.