Retention of New Teachers in Minority French and French Immersion Programs in Manitoba
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There is a shortage of teachers in Canada qualified to teach in French; some researchers have suggested that this shortage is due to attrition. This study examined the retention in Manitoba of new teachers qualified to teach in French. Participants were 130 graduates from the only French teacher education program in the province. Attrition was minimal for these graduates. Through questionnaires and a small set of interviews, participants indicated that support from their colleagues and their experience-based pre-service training program facilitated their integration into the profession. They recommended mentorship programs and more attentive administrators to further enhance integration. Key words: beginning teachers, teacher retention, pre-service training, mentorship, French Education Il y a une penurie de professeurs de francais qualifies au Canada; certains chercheurs l'expliquent par l'attrition. Cette etude porte sur le maintien en poste des nouveaux professeurs de francais qualifies au Manitoba. Les participants etaient 130 etudiants diplomes du seul programme de formation a l'enseignement du francais dans cette province. L'attrition etait minimale pour ces etudiants. Dans les questionnaires et les quelques entrevues effectuees, les participants ont indique que l'appui de leurs collegues et leur programme de formation initiale avaient facilite leur integration dans la profession. Ils ont recommande que des programmes de mentorat soient instaures et que les directions d'ecole soient plus attentives aux besoins des nouveaux professeurs en vue d'ameliorer leur integration. Mots cles: enseignants debutants, maintien en poste des enseignants, stage de formation, mentorat, enseignement du francais ********** Although English and French are the official languages in Canada, reflecting its linguistic duality, a shortage exists of teachers qualified for minority, French first-language schools (Gilbert, LeTouze, Theriault, & Landry, 2005) and for French immersion programs (Canadian Parents for French, 2004; Veilleux et Trites, 2005). However, almost no literature explains the penury in these two particular contexts. Some U.S. researchers such as Darling-Hammond (2003) and Ingersoll and Smith (2003) suggest that teacher shortages are related to new teachers leaving the profession in the first five years of their career. Considering the importance of these two programs in contributing to the development of Canada's linguistic duality, it is important that educators begin to better understand the reality surrounding the availability of teachers. The current study examined the challenges facing new teachers who graduated from the only French teacher education program in Manitoba: their attrition rate, the factors that facilitated their integration into the profession, and ways to better support them. In Manitoba, the College universitaire de Saint-Boniface (CUSB) has the provincial mandate to prepare all new teachers who will teach in French in the province. As a result, the majority of new teachers hired in Manitoba to teach in minority French first-language schools and in French immersion programs are graduates of the French pre-service teacher education program offered at the CUSB (M. Bilodeau, personal communication, June 3, 2009). Graduates from 2001 to 2005 were asked to complete questionnaires and some were selected to participate in follow-up interviews. Minority French language schools are for French first-language students living in anglophone dominated Canada, whereas French immersion programs are for non-French-speaking students in French language schools. Ali provinces except Alberta and Nova Scotia report shortages of qualified teachers in French immersion (Canadian Parents for French, 2006). Shortages of qualified teachers in minority French first-language schools are reported particularly in rural areas and in specialized fields such as special education and guidance (Gilbert, LeTouze, Theriault, & Landry, 2005). …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".