Congratulations and orchids to Stephen Celio who on August 9, 2023, successfully defended his dissertation. The title of Stephen’s dissertation is THE IMPACT OF DUAL-ENROLLMENT TEACHERS FOR TOMORROW PROGRAMS ON PARTICIPANTS’ INTENTIONS TO ENTER THE TEACHING PROFESSION. Stephen’s high quality quantitative survey study investigated the impact of Dual Enrollment (DE) Teach for Tomorrow (TfT) high school programs on participants' attitudes towards the teaching profession. Stephen’s findings were contextualized through Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior. The findings indicated small improvements in student attitudes towards entering the teaching profession, as well as in their beliefs about their ability to earn a degree in education, and in several specific facets of teaching. Supplemental findings included evidence that students’ decisions to enroll in the TfT course were slightly influenced by people close to them, and by an opportunity to earn college credit. None of the specific aspects of teaching that were surveyed contributed significantly to overall attitudes toward becoming a teacher. The results provide substantively significant evidence of the value of DE TfT programs and offered several recommendations for further research. Actions for practitioners and policymakers, including how future programs can recruit more diverse participants to better match increasingly diverse K-12 student populations, were recommendations. Additionally, Stephen’s findings provide a much-needed template for shifting of quantitative analytic plans when a researcher lacks a robust sample size – a common, yet under researched, problem in the collection of primary quantitative data.
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE CHAIR(S):
Dr. Nora C.R. Broege
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE MEMBER(S):
Dr. Peter Troiano
Dr. Karen Curtis
