WHAT DO NEW TEACHERS NEED? HOW AN RPP WORKED TO TAILOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR FIRST-TIME TEACHERS

OVERVIEW

WHY THIS WORK

A focus on high quality instruction and teacher effectiveness was a priority established by the RPP Advisory Board in 2020, emerging through exploration and examination of what was needed at the time for the district. OUSD, like many districts across the country, has significantly increased the number of new teachers. Of particular importance is the increased number of emergency-permit teachers, or teachers who are entering the classroom without any previous training on teaching. In the past few years, the importance of high-quality professional learning for this group of teachers has become ever more apparent to OUSD’s New Teacher Support and Development (NTSD) team. The role of this team is to support new teachers’ entry into the profession, ensuring that new teachers have the support, resources, and facilitative conditions they need the moment they enter the classroom. Every year, NTSD asks early career teachers (teachers who have not yet attained a clear credential) to complete a survey about what they perceive as their greatest challenges in the job. Teachers’ feedback pointed to the need for more support for new teachers. This research project aimed to (1) learn even more about new teachers’ professional learning experiences to (2) better tailor early career learning experiences for OUSD teachers.

WHAT THE WORK EXAMINES

Research Question. Our research examined the following overall question: What areis new teachers’ experiences with professional learning in OUSD? This question was examined from various participant perspectives. We asked teachers about different professional learning sources (New Teacher Support and Development, other Central Office teams), different professional learning models (site-based professional development, Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), coaching), and we asked teachers to describe their “ideal” professional learning structure.

This project was led by OUSD’s NTSD team in collaboration with an assigned Graduate Student Researcher (GSR), and support from the RPP director who manages liaison responsibilities for the RPP.

Methods: For this project, we relied on participant perception data. We used three different methods to gather data: surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews. We chose these methods because first, the survey was already occurring, and second, the focus groups offered opportunities to go deeper into participant experience. Additionally, individual interviews offered an opportunity to ask more follow-up questions about particular aspects of new teacher experiences, as well as an opportunity for participants to share more than they would in a group context. Our timeline was:

• February 2023: Big, all-new teacher (NT) survey (replacing the previous end-of-year survey): The survey was sent to 566 teachers, 323 teachers participated (with 290 of these completing the whole survey), representing a 57% response rate
• March 2023: Focus group interviews (recruited from NT survey): 34 teachers were recruited to participate in focus group interviews, 10 teachers actively participated
• April 2023: Individual interviews (recruited from focus groups and/or NT survey): From combined recruitment efforts, 5 teachers participated in the individual interviews

The graduate student researcher was heavily involved in this entire process. With her guidance, we started by redesigning NTSD’s existing early career teacher survey so that it was more likely to get the kind of information NTSD was seeking. While this survey already was a major source of information about new teachers’ experiences, it did not provide opportunities for follow-up questions and more detailed answers. Our re-design also moved any demographic data questions to the end and instead, started with the most important questions. These questions focused on how teachers learn and what they need to know to navigate working in the district, particularly around professional learning. This was particularly relevant as NTSD had started to offer new-teacher specific professional learning on classroom culture building and on lesson planning, which were two areas that had been cited most frequently as areas of challenge by new teachers taking the previous iterations of the survey. In our redesigned survey, we made sure to gather more data that could inform these new professional learning lessons. We also shared the survey with leaders from various departments in the district to see if they had any input/other questions they wanted answered on the specific topic.

From there, our GSR designed questions for the focus groups and Interviews that NTSD provided feedback on, and then the GSR facilitated both the focus groups and the interviews. The ability to run focus groups with a GSR (versus an employee of the district) was chosen to promote the privacy of the focus group and interview participants from the district.

FINDINGS

Survey. Findings from the survey generally followed trends of previous years in terms of naming challenges like classroom management and lesson planning, as well as the ongoing sense of overwhelm and lack of time to do all that is necessary as a new teacher. Findings suggested that the needs of new teachers are distinct from the learning desires and needs of their more veteran counterparts. Additionally, new teachers presented the following:

• New teachers shared that the new-teacher specific PD was a good idea but that offering it outside of contract hours made it impossible for them, as they had to add one more thing to their plates. This led to a district shift in offering new teacher specific PD on Wednesday afternoons, during regular PD time in 2024-25.

Focus Groups: Participating teachers in the focus groups shared that:

• The district provided substitute teachers so that new teachers can address things specific to them (for example, they can take a day to study for the CSET or to deal with credentialing challenges, or they can take a day to plan with their coach or to observe veteran teachers without it impacting their vacation/sick time or impacting their site's budget). This was seen as helpful, but questions remained about how to use these subs. People cited that an “OUSD Teachers 101” would be helpful, including some information about navigating the myriad of systems and offices to support.
• Payroll, and making sure that people were getting paid/finding out about one’s payroll situation was also named as a challenge for new teachers. 
• Women of color shared that they were not receiving the necessary supports for their unique needs.

Overall, these findings were important because the focus of NTSD previously had been specifically on professional learning, however in the focus groups, teachers were free to expand the scope of what learning might have been most important to them.

Individual interviews. The interview responses tended to focus more on the challenges brought about by trying to navigate a large bureaucracy. Findings illustrated through the individual interviews included the following:

• Numerous challenges identified by a significant percentage of individual teachers through their interviews mirrored the results from the survey (time, or lack thereof, was named as the largest challenge).
• A resonant example from one respondent indicated a request for a “one stop shop” option to put all the necessary information new teachers may need in one place.
• Another respondent indicated, “I think one thing that I feel is missing, even when I was an adult education instructor in OUSD is something akin to a new teachers binder that explains things from how to get a sub, meeting days and times, contracted times, etc…... ”I think this would have to be site specific, but this could be really helpful as new teachers just end up having to ask a ton of questions.”

IMPACT AND USE OF THE WORK

We shared the findings of this research with our NTSD team, as well as with key talent development figures in OUSD (people who are responsible for onboarding, including the lead for OUSD’s Human Resource Department) in order to consider how to best support teachers with the learning they need. Below, we outline the changes that were implemented in direct response to the findings, as well as the overall learning for NTSD, the district, and the university. We also share the results of our yearly surveys with the new teachers themselves through NTSD’s newsletter, as well as reference the data that has explicitly led to changes when presenting information about professional development.

Overall, the impact from this project produced information that has been incorporated into considerations about how the Talent team brings in new teachers to OUSD, and how NTSD communicates information about the multitude of supports that exist for new teachers (test prep, subs, office hours) and how to access them. 

Learning for NTSD: The NTSD team learned better ways to design surveys, more about the context of new teachers and their challenges in today’s current context and the overall district environment, and what PD needs new teachers had. In response, NTSD implemented several changes: Research findings were considered as a factor in first creating NT-only PD offerings. In 2024-25, these PD offerings were taking place at the same time as other PD (at the school site level, as well as at the district level) – in 2025-26, thanks to both teacher feedback (for example, they found it hard to concentrate at the end of the school day) and principal feedback (they wanted all staff onsite for PD), it moved to full day, 1x/month PD for 1st year in the classroom teachers. Additionally, NTSD has been working with the Talent team in general to figure out how to best support new teachers/employees with timely, clear information about things like payroll and benefits, that are important but are not always seen as “professional learning.” Yet, if these areas are not addressed, teachers/employees are unable to focus on the more technical pieces of their jobs due to worrying about the life stress challenges which payroll can create. This year, Talent incorporated New Employee Orientation days, part of which included “kiosks,” where new employees could get more information about desired topics, including onboarding topics such as payroll.

Learning for the District: Our OUSD/UC Berkeley RPP NTSD project helped us redesign our annual new teacher and coach surveys to make the data collected more relevant, actionable, and useful to informing continuous improvement of new teacher support systems in OUSD. We have used the data from these surveys and other sources to make decisions about new teacher coaching, PD, and credentialing support. We have also used it to educate other leaders and stakeholders around the system about the primary needs/challenges of new teachers that we need to collectively address. For example, the survey data drove the focus of our new teacher PD and was instrumental in getting the cross-team collaboration that was needed to design, launch, and implement our new system-wide approach to new teacher training. More generally, the data has helped elevate awareness across the systems about new teacher experience in OUSD and, as a result, to generate buy-in on collective and collaborative solutions to further grow and retain new teachers. In terms of our overall RPP, w. We have stayed grounded in the notion that relationships are at the center of our RPP and in fact at the center of systems change work. Through the RPP we've learned how to improve on our lines of inquiry, data collection (the what and the how), and most importantly, how to use our collective approach to further advance educational improvements in OUSD.

Learning for UCB: On the university-side, we learned from this work (as well as other RPP projects), that we need to continue to strengthen university researchers’ skills in participatory methodologies – this kind of RPP work isn’t easy! Even researchers who are trained in and graduate students who are currently training to partner in community-engaged research need continued professional development and structures for ongoing support to work effectively with district partners. We also need to continue to address the  “process-output tension,” in which traditional research timelines fail to produce the knowledge and results needed in time to address district research needs and priorities: For example, the district at times needed readily available access to the data from the NTSD project, as well as other projects from the RPP. At times, university timelines, internal university research processes/approvals, and communication challenges delayed adequately addressing this need.

OPEN QUESTIONS AND NEXT STEPS

One ongoing question that the NTSD team is grappling with is how to continue to support teachers in contexts that often feel overwhelming and unmanageable when our role is limited to support, yet not able to influence the conditions themselves that lead to the challenging circumstances. For example, cost of living necessitates that teachers often live far from OUSD, and while many surveys have suggested that new teachers need more time than experienced teachers to complete the same tasks, new teachers have the same teaching load as teachers who have many more years of experience. Thus, longer commutes leave them with less time to complete tasks that already take them longer to complete than it does for veteran teachers. We are still examining what is possible when it comes to helping support teachers who grapple with these external, out-of-our-control circumstances.

More broadly, we are also working on assessing the effectiveness / usefulness of this research project as part of an overall RPP impact audit, which will be our second such audit, building on an initial audit we conducted in 2022. This audit is examining (1) the infrastructure of the overall RPP and how to sustain it and overall partnership management within the context of new leadership, administrative and structural changes within the district, and a climate of uncertainty, transition, and fiscal disruptions, and (2) the RPP’s capacity and effectiveness when it comes to producing research that is (a) actionable and can be used to implement and influence changes in coordinated and coherent ways and (b) communicated effectively on both the research and practice sides.

We are looking forward to continuing to learn with and from our new teachers on how to best support them so we can help create the best possible environment for them – and for our students.

Acknowledgment: On behalf of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) RPP and the New Teacher Support and Development Team, we want to extend sincere appreciation to the Graduate Student Researchers who were essential to every aspect of the NTSD project, Emily Nicole Reich and Joy Esboldt. Additionally, Scholar Reich is to be commended for her adaptability when research design changes were necessary and active engagement with teachers to collect data was critical. We also offer our gratitude to the Hewlett Foundation for their initial support of the OUSD and UCB RPP, and the Stuart Foundation for their generous and continued commitment to date.

Victoria Folks is Manager of New Teacher Support & Development at Oakland Unified School District and Tameka McGlawn is Executive Director of the College and Career Academy Support Network at the University of California, Berkeley.

Suggested citation: Folks, V., & McGlawn, T. (2025). What Do New Teachers Need? How an RPP Worked to Tailor Professional Development for First-Time Teachers. NNERPP Extra, 7(4), pp. 2-9. https://doi.org/10.25613/KQ21-KQ82