Conduct a larger-scale, statewide study of mentoring features and retention to detect small or moderate relationships¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The report recommends scaling up evidence generation: "A larger-scale study, such as one that includes all first-year teachers in the state, could more reliably identify small or moderate relationships between mentoring features and teacher retention as statistically significant." A statewide survey with a similar response rate could detect retention differences as small as 4 percentage points, though it would still not establish causality. Such evidence would let leaders develop reliable guidance prioritizing promising mentoring activities and topics.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Adding mentoring questions to a statewide survey of all first-year teachers, which the original study could not do because of survey length constraints

Constraints¶

• Even a larger study's design would not necessarily enable determining causality

Target Learners¶

• All first-year teachers statewide

Target Learning Goals¶

• Teacher retention
• Mentoring program improvement

Related Strategies¶

• State and district leaders should collect information from mentors about how they chose activities and topics, to decide whether variation reflects teacher needs or insufficient mentor resources
• Conduct a smaller sequence of rapid-cycle studies that build on one another instead of planning a single large confirmatory study
• Phased iterative testing: optimization testing before efficacy testing before statewide scale-up
• States conduct a statewide survey of new teachers with comparable questions across all programs

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Brodersen, R. M., Chiang, H., Coleman, K., Hitt, C., Li, J., Ritter, G., & Weston-Sementelli, J. (2025). Examining the mentoring experiences of first-year teachers in Missouri (REL 2025–014). U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/resource-library/report/descriptive-study/examining-mentoring-experiences-first-year-teachers-missouri