Design (1) A discipline-level disaggregation of national data on STEM teachers and (2) a longitudinal examination of that data using SAS 9.3 Definition: A physics teacher is a teacher with at least one class period of physics taught during the sampled academic year, (2) STEM teacher in a similar manner but excludes physics teachers, and (3) non-STEM teacher as all remaining teachers excluding physics and STEM teachers. Age and Experience of Physics / STEM Teachers The diagram on the left shows the breakdown of courses taught by age. The diagram in the center shows the courses taught by experience. The graph on the right shows a comparison between age and experience teaching physics. What is interesting to see is that both STEM and nonSTEM showed increases in teachers in their 20s yet physics remained somewhat stagnant. Physics also has a slightly higher percentage of older teachers compared with other STEM disciplines. This contributes to the fact that a lower percentage of physics teachers have less experience than other STEM disciplines.. Number of Physics Teachers The diagram on the left was taken from the AIP Report Who Teaches High School Physics (retrieved from: httl:// We compare this result with our SASS data (figure in center) and find some similarities and differences. In the years 1990 until 2003 there is a consistent growth in both teachers and students. Also in both cases the ratios changed at relatively the same rate. However, the weighted values from the SASS reflect a lower number than the AIP data both in terms of the number of students and teachers. The graph on the right compares the percent change in the number of not only physics students and teachers but of STEM and Non-STEM teachers since Physics students show the greatest change almost every year yet the number of new physics teachers do not meet nor has ever met the increase demand. Breakdown of Main versus Not Main Assignments The diagram on the left shows that those teachers who have physics as their main teaching assignment are more likely to have a physics degree (left). Physics teachers with Engineering degrees are becoming more prominent. The majority of physics teachers teach chemistry or mathematics as their main assignment (right). Longitudinal Demographics of US High School Physics Teachers Using the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) David Rosengrant, Greg Rushton, Herman Ray, Jeremy Jaggernauth Kennesaw State University AAPT 2014 – Orlando, Fl., January 6 th, 2014 Abstract This project is an outcome from a multidisciplinary team to study secondary physics teaching using the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) between 1987 and We will answer the following questions (and when applicable compare AIP survey results to): How many physics teachers are there in the United States? What are trends in the population growth compared to other teacher groups in the past 20 years? What proportion of those that teach physics do so as their main assignment? What other subjects do physics teachers teach? To what extent have physics teachers earned a physics degree at any level? What other backgrounds do these teachers have? What has been the certification status of physics teachers over time? To what extent has the racial and gender profile of physics teachers changed over time? To what extent have the age and years’ of experience distributions change over time? Introduction Several documents have raised concerns about the nature of the STEM workforce (Landers & Gates Jr, 2010; National Research Council, 2005, 2010). As a result of these documents, national initiatives such as the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program have emerged to support the growth of K12 science and math teaching careers. To ensure that large-scale initiatives are employing the right fixes for the right problem, it is critical to understand the landscape that those programs are trying to reshape. Ingersoll and Merrill (2010) recently aggregated STEM and non-STEM teachers in an analysis of the entire US K12 teacher workforce using data from the National Center for Education Statistics’s Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) between 1987 and We will compare these results with those from the American Institute of Physics and their focus on series. References are available upon request Research Questions Who is teaching America’s high school physics students? How do physics teachers compare to teachers in other STEM and non-STEM disciplines? Teachers are counted only once, so a teacher with both a physics major and physics education minor counts here only as a physics major. The hierarchy for counting is physics major, physics education major, physics minor, and physics education minor. Percent of Physics Teachers with a Physics Degree* Main Teaching by Degree Course Taught by Degree Physics not main assignment Degrees of Physics Teachers The diagram on the left was taken from the AIP Report Who Teaches High School Physics (retrieved from: httl:// AIP breaks down their numbers by those with Physics or Physics Education Degrees while we take the analysis to include specific disciplines. What we find is that almost as many people teaching physics have a biology degree (which has been consistent over the past few years) that have a physics degree. Both of these outrank chemistry and mathematics, two disciplines closer to physics. Conclusions Collectively, our results indicate that the US physics teacher population is not well represented by aggregate STEM data. Therefore, initiatives judging success on aggregate data may not be able to identify specific areas for reform efforts. In this light, our results hint at a diffusion of responsibility within the STEM community regarding which groups should initiate reform efforts. More importantly, the lack of physics teachers may actually be worse than previously assumed, especially in garnering qualified individuals to teach it. Programs like KSU I- IMPACT project is recruiting physics professionals into the teaching career to aid in this problem.