Profiling Potential Candidates For STEM Teaching In Israel

With the imminent retirement of a large number of mathematics and science teachers, the coming years will witness a growing shortage of teachers in these disciplines. Over the past two years of the Trump Foundation’s activity, we have initiated a number of grants whose goal is to address this shortage by attracting highly talented individuals to the teaching profession, and more specifically to the fields of mathematics and the sciences. This is no easy feat, bearing in mind the strong competition from high-tech and industry career paths, and the generally negative perception of teachers and teaching in Israeli society.

A survey we commissioned in July 2012 which examined Israeli public perceptions of teachers and the teaching profession with a focus on mathematics and science teachers, showed that 8.6% of survey participants declared that they would move to teaching mathematics or science if they were given the right opportunity. These potential candidates are a target audience for the foundation’s work, however we now need to better understand their profile, considerations and preferences in order to learn the best ways to reach them and attract them to teaching.

In order to gain a detailed profile of this group, we propose commissioning an expert company to perform seven focus groups across Israel, comprised of those people with a suitable academic background who are willing to consider moving into teaching mathematics and science in high school. We would like to know who these potential candidates are in terms of gender, ethnicity, academic and professional background, age group and family status; we would need to understand what drives them towards teaching at this particular time, what are their considerations, expectations and fears; and we would aim to better comprehend how they consume information and who and what affects their decision-making.

The results will be shared with our grantees who are trying to attract talented people into mathematics and science high school teaching and with the larger teacher-training community.   They will also comprise a better foundation for fine-tuning our social media efforts in this realm, including a facebook mini-site which will direct interested candidates to different options for teacher training for career-changers.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 84