Middle-Level Teacher Certification/Licensure: Current Status and Future Directions

The Successful Middle School: This We Believe calls for specialized middle-level certification/licensure and teacher development. Certification/licensure has an impact on teacher preparation and, likely, the recruitment and retention of middle-level educators. In order to continue to advocate for specialized certification/licensure, research needs to determine the nature of certification/licensure, the origins and impacts of their shifts, and the recruitment and retention of middle-level educators, especially related to their pathway. This literature review is part of the development of a research agenda for the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Middle Level Education Research (MLER) Special Interest Group (SIG). The purpose of this review is to examine the current status of the research related to middle-level certification/licensure and the research questions generated for the MLER SIG research agenda. The literature from the last 23 years was explored to conduct this combination of literature and scoping literature review. Gaps of research were identified, and some questions were unable to be answered through this type of study. From this literature review, it is clear that ongoing and additional research needs to be conducted related to middle-level certification/licensure related to the research questions we initially generated as part of the research agenda.