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Science And Mathematics Teacher Communities Of Practice: Social Influences On Discipline-Based Identity And Self-Efficacy Beliefs, Samuel J. Polizzi, Yicong Zhu, Joshua W. Reid, Brandon Ofem, Sara Salisbury, Michael Beeth, Gillian Roehrig, Margaret J. Mohr-Schroeder, Keith Sheppard, Gregory T. Rushton

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Faculty Publications

Background
Teacher communities of practice, identity, and self-efficacy have been proposed to influence positive teacher outcomes in retention, suggesting all three may be related constructs. Qualitative studies of communities of practice can be difficult to empirically link to identity and self-efficacy in larger samples. In this study, we operationalized teacher communities of practice as specific networks related to teaching content and/or pedagogy. This scalable approach allowed us to quantitatively describe communities of practice and explore statistical relationships with other teacher characteristics. We asked whether these community of practice networks were related to identity and self-efficacy, similar to other conceptualizations of …