Even though students' grades are no worse with online teaching than with face-to-face teaching, many report that the learning process is not sufficient. In 2022, researchers from Ruhr University Bochum's Faculty of Medicine proved that the body actually reacts differently to online teaching than to face-to-face formats, specifically with a reduced physiological state of arousal. In a exact study, the team led by Morris Gellisch and Professor Beate Brand-Saberi shows that the physiological state of arousal during teaching can be influenced by making the format interactive. The researchers from the Anatomy and Molecular Embryology research group, together with the team from the Cognitive Psychology research group, report the results in the journal Annals of Anatomy of 26 January 2023.

Science teachers and technicians are the people we rely on to educate and inspire our future scientists. Their knowledge, skills and love of the sciences provide the crucial building blocks of a thriving chemical sciences workforce. 

Teaching and working as a technician can be rewarding careers. But this is also a challenging time for these professions. Many school and college science departments are understaffed in terms of both teachers and technicians, with school leaders continuing to experience recruitment and retention issues. Despite these challenges teachers told us great science teaching is:

Supporting teachers of chemistry in the UK and Ireland is a strategic priority for us. Our policy work and day to day support for teachers are shaped by continuous dialogue with education communities. In 2022 we launched The Science Teaching Survey to understand more about the experiences and attitudes of science teachers and technicians. 

The annual survey amplifies the voice of secondary teachers, heads of department and technicians around the rewards and challenges of their profession. By understanding the needs and challenges faced by teachers in different regions and circumstances, we are building a body of evidence that will be used to influence government policy, prioritise programmes of support for teachers and measure the impact of our work.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who participated in the research.

The 2022 survey provided us with:

The findings provide us a baseline against which we can measure any shift – positive or negative – in future surveys. In 2023, we want to go deeper into specific themes including: 

• attitudes towards the curriculum 
• teachers’ access to high quality, subject-specific continuing professional development (CPD) 
• wellbeing and job satisfaction, particularly for disabled teachers and those from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds 
• the challenges of science teaching in schools in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation 
• the deployment of subject experts 

On this page is a summary of the findings and actions we are taking to drive positive change in the education sector. Use the links below to read the detail behind each of the main findings.

RICHMOND, Va. -- A 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot and wounded his first-grade teacher constantly cursed at staff and teachers, tried to whip students with his belt and once choked another teacher “until she couldn't breathe,” according to a legal notice filed by an attorney for the wounded teacher.

The incidents were described in a notice sent to the Newport News school district by Diane Toscano, an attorney for teacher Abby Zwerner, informing the district that Zwerner intends to sue. The notice of claim, which was obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request, outlines prior behavioral issues the boy had at Richneck Elementary School and troubling interactions he had with teachers and students.

Two days before the shooting, the boy allegedly “slammed” Zwerner's cellphone and broke it, according to the claim notice. He was given a one-day suspension, but when he returned to Zwerner's class the following day, he pulled a 9mm handgun out of his pocket and shot her while she sat at a studying table, the notice says.

“It is a miracle that more people were not harmed," Toscano wrote in her notice. “The shooter spent his entire recess with a gun in his pocket, a gun that was loaded and ready to fire ... while lots of first-grade students played.”

The details in the notice of intent to sue, including the allegation that the boy attempted to choke another teacher, were first reported by the Daily Press of Newport News.

The choking incident described in the notice was confirmed by the teacher. She said that in 2021, the boy came up behind her as she sat in a chair in the front of the class, locked his forearms in front of her neck and pulled back and down, hard. She said a teaching assistant pulled the boy off her.

The teacher requested anonymity because she fears potential retaliation from the school district. She said she reported the incident to school administrators, but did not receive the kind of supportive response she had hoped for from them.

“I didn't feel safe the rest of the year because I knew if they didn't protect me when he choked me and I couldn't breathe, then they wouldn't protect me, my kids or my colleagues if he did something not as harmful,” she told The Associated Press.

The boy was later moved into another class in another school.

After the shooting, police said the boy was taken to a medical facility where he is receiving unspecified services.

The legal notice sent fleshed out Zwerner's allegations of negligence at Richneck on the morning of Jan. 6, which Toscano had first outlined last month at a news conference.

A detailed timeline describes how Zwerner, three other teachers and a guidance counselor were involved in airing concerns about the child possibly having a gun.

“If Assistant Principal (Ebony) Parker had acted on the information she was provided, then the shooting of Ms. Zwerner would not have happened,” the notice stated.

Zwerner went to former Assistant Principal Parker's office at about 11:15 a.m. “to advise her that the shooter seemed more ‘off’ than usual and was in a violent mood." It also says the boy had threatened to beat up a kindergarten student and “angrily stared down” the school security officer in the lunch room.

At about 11:45 a.m. another teacher learned that the boy had told students he had a gun in his backpack, the notice stated. The teacher searched the backpack at about 12:30 p.m. but found no gun.

The same teacher “was made aware that the shooter had taken something out of his backpack right before she searched the shooter’s backpack, and the shooter put it in the pocket of his hoodie before going out to recess,” the notice stated.

When that teacher raised concerns to Parker, the assistant principal said the student “had small pockets, insinuating that he could not possibly have a gun on his person,” the notice of claim stated.

“Assistant Principal Parker should have called police,” the notice stated. “Instead, she did not follow proper protocol and chose to do absolutely nothing.”

Shortly after 1 p.m., a third teacher learned from a student in Zwerner’s class that the shooter showed him the gun during recess and threatened to shoot him if he told anyone, the notice stated.

That teacher called the school’s office and shared what she knew with a fourth teacher who picked up the phone, the notice stated. The fourth teacher relayed the information to Parker, who said she was aware of the threat and that the student’s backpack had been searched.

The third and fourth teachers conferred again. And the fourth teacher returned to Parker's office, where a guidance counselor was raising similar concerns about the student having a gun, the notice stated.

The guidance counselor asked if he could search the child for a weapon, to which Parker said “no” because the child’s mother was arriving soon to pick him up, the notice stated.

“Then approximately 45 minutes later Ms. Zwerner was shot in her left hand and upper chest by the shooter,” the notice stated. “Ms. Zwerner was sitting at her studying table when the shooter, who was sitting at his desk, pulled the gun out of his pocket and shot her one time.”

Parker, who resigned from her position last month, could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for the school district said she did not know if Parker has retained an attorney.

Len Wallin, director of legal services for the school system, said in an email that it’s standard practice for the school division to forward notices of intent to sue to its insurer, which handles such litigation.

Wallin said the district’s insurer will handle decisions regarding whether it will represent Parker or not “after consultation with the school board, if that is necessary.”

In the meantime, Toscano wrote in her notice that Zwerner's is continuing to recover physically and from psychological wounds that “cut deeply and remain fresh.”

“It is my hope that the school district will not want to drag Ms. Zwerner through litigation after the trauma she has sustained,” Toscano wrote.

“The response from the school district is going to be very important and will shed light on how it views its teachers," Toscano continued. I hope that the school district will not send a message that being shot while teaching a lesson in class by a student is merely a hazard of the job.”

____

Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.

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For more coverage of the shooting: https://apnews.com/hub/newport-news

Copyright 2023 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

New Mexico is still fighting a teacher shortage, and state lawmakers are working to combat it. Kristine Moore has been a high school teacher for more than a decade. Moore says her job has changed drastically since the COVID-19 pandemic.Moore said, "trying to figure out how we reengage our kids is a struggle for all of us right now. We have students that face so many social and economic challenges every day. When they get into that classroom and find one teacher they connect with, it makes all the difference in the world, and teachers become mentors."There are two bills in our legislature aimed at putting a dent in the shortage.One of them is Senate Bill 28, which would provide a tax deduction for all public school teachers who buy school supplies with their own money.The other is House Bill 127, which would double the minimum salary for educational assistants in our state from 12 to 25 thousand dollars a year.During last year's legislative session, minimum licensed teacher salaries were increased by 10 thousand dollars. Ellen Bernstein is the president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation. She believes changes like that are the key to recruiting new teachers, retaining those in the industry, and reclaiming the ones who have left."When I started teaching more than 20 years ago, there were many teachers and very few jobs. Now, there are very few teachers and many jobs. If our workplace cultures are positive and we have a balance, people will stay in teaching," said Bernstein.

Bryan Kohberger, the suspect in the slayings of four University of Idaho students, was reportedly fired from his job as a teaching assistant days before his arrest.

Kohberger, 28, is accused of breaking into a rental home in Moscow, Idaho, and fatally stabbing Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, in the early hours of November 13.

At the time of the killings, Kohberger was a doctoral candidate in criminology and teaching assistant at Washington State University in nearby Pullman.

But Kohberger had received several warnings from the university in the months before his arrest and was terminated from his teaching assistant position on December 19, NewsNation's Ashleigh Banfield reported on Tuesday, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Just days before the reported firing, Kohberger had embarked on a cross-country drive to his parents' home in Pennsylvania—during which he was under surveillance by FBI agents. He was arrested there on December 30.

He is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary. He has yet to enter a plea, although his lawyer in Pennsylvania previously said he was "eager to be exonerated. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for late June.

According to Banfield, a letter that was given to Kohberger before he was terminated stated that he had a "sexist attitude" towards women he interacted with at the university, was "rude" to women and graded them differently to men.

The letter also reportedly detailed a timeline of events leading up to Kohberger's termination, beginning with an alleged "altercation" with a professor on September 23, just weeks into the job.

Banfield said the letter states that Kohberger and the professor then met on October 3 to discuss "professional behavior." The professor reportedly emailed Kohberger on October 21 to tell him he had failed to meet the expectations set out in the meeting earlier that month.

They met again on November 12 to discuss an "improvement plan." Another meeting was held on December 7 to discuss how that plan was going.

On December 9, Kohberger reportedly had a second altercation with the professor. His post was officially terminated 10 days later.

Phil Weiler, vice president of marketing and communications at Washington State University, told Newsweek that Kohberger had received an appointment as a teaching assistant in the fall 2022 semester, but "does not currently have a teaching assistantship and he is not currently enrolled at WSU."

"It is typical for students to receive a teaching assistantship or similar appointment as part of their PhD program," he added.

Weiler declined to provide further details, saying information "concerning a student's teaching assistantship is considered a student record" and universities were prevented from discussing student records by the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

"As a result, I am unable to comment on Mr. Kohberger's experience as a teaching assistant," he said.

Update 02/09/23, 8:40 a.m. ET: This article was updated to add comments from Phil Weiler of Washington State University.

News headlines often provide the impression of teacher shortages as national and state level crises, but if policymakers want to ensure classrooms are adequately staffed, they need to examine and address labor market conditions more locally, all the way down to the school level. That's according to a new working paper by Christopher Candelaria, assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, and his colleagues Danielle Edwards and Matthew Kraft at Brown University and Alvin Christian at the University of Michigan.

"We often hear competing narratives about the existence and severity of teacher shortages. One of our goals with this study was to reconcile these views by answering the question, can you have both a surplus of teachers and a teacher shortage; must they be opposed to each other?" Candelaria said. "It turns out you can, but it depends on at which level or locality you are examining the shortage. You need to think about shortages that occur at specific schools and in specific subjects and what's causing them."

Candelaria and his colleagues analyzed data gathered from the 2019–2020 Tennessee Educator Survey (before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic)—administered to all Tennessee educators annually by the Tennessee Education Research Alliance and the Tennessee Department of Education—to understand and predict teacher shortages at the state, regional, district, and school levels. They found that only 2% of Tennessee teaching positions were vacant at the beginning of the 2019–2020 school year, but they were concentrated in a quarter of Tennessee schools distributed across the state. Of these vacancies, 73% occurred in secondary schools. Half the schools reporting vacancies had only one unfilled position, and just 6% of schools with vacancies had more than two unfilled positions.

The researchers found that teacher staffing challenges are highly localized, allowing for shortages and surpluses to coexist between schools and subjects within districts, and that schools' historical attrition rates are especially predictive of teacher vacancies. Other school- and district-level factors including fewer teacher graduates who participated in teacher preparation programs near the school, fewer early-career teachers who grew up within 25 miles of the school, modest rates of salary increase, and poor working conditions also played a role.

Districts also experience teacher staffing challenges by subject area. Two-thirds of Tennessee districts reported difficulty recruiting enough math, science, foreign language, and special education teachers compared to one-fifth of districts with difficulty recruiting enough elementary and social studies teachers.

The researchers conclude that focusing on aggregate descriptions of shortages conceals variation in the types of vacancies within districts and the reasons for them, and that developing effective solutions to teacher shortages depends on addressing problems at the local level. They suggest that schools may need to focus on improving working conditions and districts may need to increase pay for early-career teachers and frontload salary schedules. Additionally, expanding federal reporting requirements on teacher labor markets and shortages would provide access to more localized data. Only eight states currently report teacher shortage data by county, district, or geographic area.

"Tennessee should be seen as a case study that could be applied to other states," Candelaria said. "In each state, we need to delve a little deeper to understand where the variation in teacher shortages is being driven, so that we can design policies to alleviate some of them. When we think about a framework, like this study, that allows us to identify where shortages are, then we can start having meaningful policy conversations."

Candelaria and his colleagues see this paper as a framework for examining teacher shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as preliminary results from 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 Tennessee Educator Surveys suggest that patterns of geographic and grade-level variation in teacher shortages remain; however, the percentage of schools reporting vacancies increased by approximately one-third. Given these early findings, the researchers argue that teacher shortages and surpluses likely coexist following the pandemic.

A Volusia County high school teacher and coach has been arrested for allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with a student.Port Orange police say they got a report on Friday of an inappropriate sexual relationship between a 15-year-old student and a teacher at Atlantic High School.After investigating over the weekend, detectives say on Sunday, they arrested teacher Arin Hankerd after executing a search warrant at his home.Hankerd is a gym teacher and football coach for Atlantic High School. Police claim his relationship with the student began around the first week of January and continued until last Friday.Police also say Atlantic High School, where Hankerd has worked for the past two years, is not the only school Hankerd has worked at in Volusia County. In the past, he taught at Mainland High School and was a football coach for Father Lopez Catholic High School.Volusia County Schools did release a statement saying, "This evening, Volusia County Schools learned about a teacher from Atlantic High School being arrested for alleged inappropriate behavior with a student. This teacher has been suspended indefinitely pending the outcome of an investigation. The safety and security of our students and staff is of utmost importance to us and as such, we will be cooperating fully with the local authorities as part of this investigation."Hankerd faces several criminal charges and is currently being held at the Volusia County Jail on a bond of $115,000.The investigation is ongoing, and anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Port Orange police.Top headlines: 'A true fireman': Loved ones remember Ormond Beach firefighter who died after surfing accident FHP: 2 people killed in Lake County crashPolice: Man killed in Brevard County shooting

A 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot and wounded his first-grade teacher constantly cursed at staff and teachers, chased students around and tried to whip them with his belt and once choked another teacher "until she couldn't breathe," according to a legal notice filed by an attorney for the wounded teacher.

The incidents were described in a notice sent to the Newport News school district by Diane Toscano, an attorney for teacher Abby Zwerner, informing the district that Zwerner intends to sue. The notice of claim, which was obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request, outlines prior behavioral issues the boy had at Richneck Elementary School and troubling interactions he had with teachers and students.

Two days before the shooting, the boy allegedly "slammed" Zwerner's cellphone and broke it, according to the claim notice. He was given a one-day suspension, but when he returned to Zwerner's class the following day, he pulled a 9mm handgun out of his pocket and shot her while she sat at a studying table, the notice says.

The notice elaborates on allegations Toscano outlined last month during a news conference.

The document says that several hours before the shooting, at least three teachers and staff members warned school administrators that they believed the boy had brought a gun to school. The boy's backpack was searched, but no gun was found, and administrators did not remove the boy from class, lock down the school or call police.

The claim notice says that Zwerner went to former Assistant Principal Ebony Parker's office at about 11:15 a.m. that day "to advise her that the shooter seemed more 'off' than usual and was in a violent mood." It also says the boy had threatened to beat up a kindergarten student and "angrily stared down" the school security officer in the lunch room.

The document describes several more warnings that Parker was allegedly given by staff about the boy having a gun. 

"Assistant Principal Parker should have called police, instead she did not follow proper protocol and chose to do absolutely nothing," the claim notice states.

Parker, who resigned from her position last month, could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for the school district said she did not know if Parker has retained an attorney.

Len Wallin, director of legal services for the school system, said in an email that it's standard practice for the school division to forward notices of intent to sue to its insurer, which handles such litigation.

Wallin said the district's insurer will handle decisions regarding whether it will represent Parker or not "after consultation with the school board, if that is necessary."