Novice Teachers: Using Professional Development to Discover Whether They Continue to Use the Behavior Management Strategies Taught in the Undergraduate Program

The need for supporting novice teachers is not a theoretical concept, it is a real concept. Teacher education programs are preparing and graduating new teachers at a fast rate, however; these new teachers are also leaving the profession at staggering rates (Clark, 2012). According to Ingersoll (2012), between 40% and 50% of all new teachers in the United States leave the profession in the first five years. This research was designed to study teacher professional development with novice special education teachers as they move from a teacher preparation program to a full-time teaching position. The participants for this study included five novice special education teachers. The participants participated in a six-day professional development workshop where they video-recorded their teaching and wrote reflections regarding the general and specific praise statements they used in their classroom. Through analysis of the meeting transcripts, observations of the meetings, and video reflection questionnaire responses, it was determined that the novice teachers were using general and specific praise. However, it was also determined their use was not as much as they were taught to use in their undergraduate program