Andrew Avitabile

Heightened concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the importance of studying the early teacher pipeline. This exploratory, descriptive article examines preservice teachers' expressed motivation for pursuing a teaching career. Using data from a large teacher education program in Texas, we use a natural language processing algorithm to categorize into topical groups roughly 2,800 essay responses to the prompt, "Explain why you decided to become a teacher." We identify 10 topics that largely reflect altruistic and intrinsic (although not extrinsic) reasons for teaching. The frequency of topics varied substantially by preservice teacher gender, race/ethnicity, and certification area. Intrinsic enjoyment of teaching and experiences with adversity predicted higher clinical teaching performance and lower attrition as a full-time teacher.

Long-standing compositional disparities and more recent concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the need to increase our understanding of the pipeline into K--12 teaching. Leveraging data from 9 million college applicants across a 10-year period, we provide the most detailed description to date of who is interested in teaching in the United States. We document substantially lower interest among men, students of color, and high-achieving students. Comparing teaching to similar career paths, such as nursing or social work, we find that racial/ethnic disparities are far greater for teaching, but gender and academic achievement gaps are comparable or less severe. We also find evidence that students interested in teaching submit fewer applications, are less likely to apply to selective colleges, and tend to apply to colleges close to their home. Controlling for application behavior greatly attenuates the relationship between teaching interest and academic achievement, suggesting that ambition or a desire for prestige is a more salient predictor of who becomes a teacher than achievement. We find corroborating evidence from applicants' teacher-recommenders, who rate students interested in teaching as having less intellectual promise and self-confidence, but greater concern for others.

Clinical teaching is vital for preservice teacher (PST) development, yet field supervisors' roles are understudied. This study analyzes over 11,000 supervisor evaluations and PST reflections from a Texas teacher preparation program using large language models to extract measures of feedback quality and content. Supervisor feedback often lacks key quality indicators: less than half of evaluations include areas for improvement or actionable next steps. Supervisors most frequently identify classroom management as needing improvement, whereas PST reflections more often focus on lesson planning. PSTs receiving classroom management feedback receive lower evaluation scores and are less likely to return to their placement schools as in-service teachers. These findings highlight an opportunity to improve supervisor feedback and better support PST growth during clinical teaching.

This study evaluates a comprehensive School Health Program (SHP) in Zambia through a cluster-randomized controlled trial involving 225 schools divided into three groups: control, full SHP, and mass drug administration only. While children under five receive significant health attention, school-age children (5-17) face high malaria morbidity with limited access to prevention and treatment, negatively impacting education through absenteeism and reduced cognitive abilities. Since 2015, the NGO Healthy Learners has partnered with Zambia's government to implement the SHP, which trains teachers as community health workers and equips schools with health rooms to provide diagnosis, treatment, and health education. Unlike limited school health programs, the SHP offers both preventive and curative care, leveraging the entire school community's resources. The research examines implementation, impact, added value, indirect effects, and long-term implications for human capital development, aiming to assess the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of this comprehensive school health model in improving health and educational outcomes.

This study investigates whether characteristics of pre-service teachers (PSTs) and their clinical teaching experiences predict their future effectiveness and retention as early career teachers. Using data from one of the largest university-based teacher education programs in Texas, the authors examine the relationship between PST attributes, clinical performance measures, and in-service outcomes. The analysis leverages administrative data, classroom observation scores, and student achievement growth to inform teacher preparation, hiring, and workforce policy in Texas.