About the PRISE Research Group

Policy Research Initiative in Science Education (PRISE) is an innovative science education research project that seeks to improve teaching and learning in high school science.The project uses a systems approach to link prior research findings with mixed research methods to inform the development of policies related to high school science teacher recruitment, induction, renewal, and retention. There are two intertwined goals of the PRISE project, research and graduate preparation. The research goal is to provide the State of Texas and the Nation with findings that lead to the development of an articulated and coherent system of continuous professional career development for high school science teachers. This system would improve the quality of science teaching while making significant contributions to reducing the current national shortage of qualified high school science teachers.The graduate preparation goal is to prepare new Ph.D.s with backgrounds in science education policy research. The preparation program is designed to prepare researchers in science education who have had first-hand experiences in designing, implementing, analyzing, and preparing policy research reports that inform practices associated with the retention of high school science teachers.

PRISE is a five-year research project consisting of five phases and a total of 37 tasks to answer three essential policy research questions about the high school science teacher professional continuum in Texas: Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there? The members of the PRISE Research Team collect and analyze data collected from Texas high schools to answer the three research questions. Currently, we are completing the last year of the project, which has involved the collection of survey and interview data from approximately 350 administrators and teachers from 50 randomly chosen high schools in Texas.

The issues investigated by PRISE are associated with the high school science teacher professional continuum (TPC). The TPC has been defined as the career path of teachers that begins with the initial preparation and continues to include recruitment, induction, and renewal. Current shortages and increasing attrition rates indicate that qualified high school science teachers are not being retained in the TPC. Shortages lead directly to questions about practices and policies of high schools and their science teachers that may affect teachers' decisions to leave or stay in the high schools science classroom.

For More Information:

Teacher Professional Continuum (TPC)

2009 Conceptual Framework