The New Teacher Induction Experience: Tension between Curricular and Programmatic Demands and the Need for Immediate Help

Throughout the history of California's Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) program, new teachers have reported experiencing substantial tension between the curricular and programmatic demands arising from their induction programs' formative assessment systems and the immediate coaching help they need to deal with day-to-day classroom responsibilities. To examine some dimensions of this tension, we undertook in-depth case study analyses of 18 novice teacher participants in an innovative online induction program managed by the Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE). Because the online format provides reasonably complete transcriptions of the new teachers' induction experiences, we anticipated being able to examine this tension in some detail. Preliminary analysis does indicate that inductees see coaching as fundamental, with formative assessment activities as valued but secondary in importance to their overall perceived needs within the classroom. Additionally, when examining overall satisfaction of new teachers enrolled in an induction program, we find important differences associated with teacher characteristics and assignments needing interpretation. We learned, however, that the data collected from this online induction program are more fragmentary and harder to organize than expected. As a result, this report must be considered a preliminary work in progress, and our findings will need to be confirmed (or modified) by future work. An important context for this study is a substantial change in state policy regarding the funding of BTSA programs. With implementation of California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), BTSA induction programs no longer have state-level budget authorization and are challenged to prove that they deserve preservation. Having lost categorical budget support and facing energized criticism from some participants, this important component of California's teacher education continuum may collapse. It is imperative that detailed evaluation studies find what, if any, critical program variables within the formative assessment systems make induction attractive to and effective for new teachers as well as empowering for their mentoring coaches. Insights Gleaned From Prior Research Several hundred published editorials, technical reports, journal articles, and books address the character and impacts of new teacher induction programs. Most are opinion pieces reporting the views of an author or interest group. Although a substantial number (approximately 200) present research findings, many of these utilize weak research designs, making their findings unreliable. In the most widely cited review of this research literature (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011), the reviewers could find only 15 empirical studies meeting basic reliability standards and purporting to describe the impact and nature of new teacher induction programs throughout the nation. The substance of this review is elaborated by Ingersoll and Strong (2012), who reiterate essentially the same conclusions. The best overall summary of the state of our knowledge about new teacher induction programs can be found in Organization and Effectiveness of Induction Programs for New Teachers (Smith, Desimone, Porter, & National Society for the Study of Education, 2012). In this section of our report, we look briefly at a critical conundrum in this impact literature, and then we turn to the literature on the use of online technologies to facilitate the induction process. In a third section, we examine the extent to which published qualitative analyses of induction programs and processes provide a framework for our study of the induction experiences of our sample of 18 teacher induction program participants from among the 81 teachers supported in a pilot online program developed by the RCOE and implemented in the 2013-2014 academic year. Studies of the Impact of New Teacher Induction Programs When Richard Ingersoll and colleagues initially examined the impact of induction programs on new teachers in 2003 and 2004 (Ingersoll, 2003; Ingersoll & Kralik, 2004), there seemed to be near-unanimous agreement among research scholars that new teacher induction programs had two potent impacts on the public school teacher workforce. …