'A New Way for New Talents in Teaching' or the Impact of Targeted Recruitment, Rigorous Selection, Innovative Training, and Ongoing Professional Support on Beginner Teachers' Performance

'A New Way for New Talents in Teaching' (NEWTT), an Erasmus+, Key Action 3: Policy Experimentation project, explores alternative pathways into the teaching profession for highly motivated graduates and professionals. The project is inspired by prior research that compares traditional teacher education programs to alternative pathways to the profession based on teacher and student performance and on key competencies and mindsets demonstrated by the teachers in both tracks. The key hypothesis tested is that rigorously selected career-changers or top-performing graduates with a strong commitment to teaching could combine their first two years at school with practical, on-the-job training and a university teacher certification program and perform at least on par with traditionally trained beginner teachers. If this proves to be true, NEWTT could potentially address a few major EU-wide education challenges. An impact assessment team have been tracking the competence, motivation, and mindsets of the alternative training group and have been comparing them to the competence, motivation, and mindsets of control groups -- traditionally trained beginner teachers also working in underperforming schools. The impact evaluation interim report for Bulgaria outlines a few key trends: NEWTT trainees and beginner teachers enter the profession with different job motivators -- the main one being social responsibility for NEWTT trainees and job security for the control group, teaching competences increase for both groups over time, and traditionally trained teachers feel a higher need for support in the three main teacher tasks of tracking student progress, giving students feedback, and establishing classroom routines. [For the complete Volume 16 proceedings, see ED586117.]