Beit Berl College will select highly talented candidates, who will train one day per week in school, guided by pedagogic instructors
The Ministry of Education intends to set a national target for high school physics graduates, in line with the growing demand for mathematics and science education. This will require additional teaching hours, nurturing clinical teaching expertise to reduce dropouts, improving instruction in junior high school to increase selection, and opening new classes in upper secondary school to expand access.
Moreover, this effort will require the training of new physics teachers to join the current cadre of teachers (which in 2012 constituted 920 teachers according to research by the Szold Institute). However, of the eight Teacher Residency programs the foundation helped seed, only Kibbutzim College is currently training physics teachers, and all of its 20 graduates thus far have found employment.
Since this number of graduates if far from sufficiently addressing the need, we approached Beit Berl College, one of the five colleges in Israel certified to train physics teachers, and asked them to plan and execute a Teacher Residency Program for physics teachers. Beit Berl has been operating a Teacher Residency program for 80 High School mathematics teachers for the past two years in collaboration with the foundation, which has successfully placed 23 out of the 25 graduates to date in teaching positions.
The college is now proposing a program to train 35 new physics teachers over three cohorts (and the foundation aims they try to train 50). Applicants will be selected via a rigorous selection process, following a targeted marketing campaign to attract highly talented candidates. A preparatory summer semester will ensure all trainee teachers master the 5-unit physics content knowledge so that studies can focus on pedagogy and clinical teaching skills.
Trainee teachers will spend one day per week in a training school, guided by pedagogic instructors, where they will observe an experienced teacher and gain teaching experience themselves. In workshops, they will analyze and discuss the lesson observations in order to integrate practical experience into academic theory. Instructional coaching by college instructors will focus on clinical teaching skills including analyzing student difficulties and choosing from a range of teaching strategies for dealing with them.
Graduates will join an alumni network for two years, which will help place them in schools and offer internship workshops and group coaching.
* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / 217