Perceived Life Satisfaction of Workplace Specialist I Faculty and Mentors Participating in a First-Year STEM Teacher Training Project.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to measure perceived professional and personal life satisfaction of Indiana Workplace Specialist I (WS I) faculty and their mentors. Workplace Specialist I teachers are all first-year career and technical education (CTE) faculty who must complete the WS I training program to be eligible for the Workplace Specialist II teaching license. These new teachers bring significant professional skills and experience to the secondary classroom; however, none had completed traditional teachers college training before they were licensed. WS I faculty are assigned mentors during the first year of training. Mentors must have at least five years of kindergarten-12 (K-12) teaching experience, and typically they are CTE faculty members. During a WS I / Mentor training workshop, 84 first-year WS I faculty and 68 mentors were asked to take the Life Satisfaction Index for the Third Age (LSITA) in an effort to determine perceived overall life satisfaction; 105 total people participated in the study. Of these 105, 45 mentors perceived life satisfaction as higher than did the 60 first-year WS I CTE teachers. The results of the statistical analyses revealed statistical significance at the 0.1 level (0.068). When analyzing only participants (both mentors and WS I teachers who were 50 years of age or older, the results of the statistical analyses revealed a statistical significance at the 0.05 level (0.023) between the perceived life satisfaction results of the 10 first-year WS I faculty and the 28 mentors. Mentors who were 50 years of age or older had a higher level of perceived life satisfaction than did the first-year WS I faculty members of the same age group.