Section archive - Beginning Teachers

This article examines emotionally challenging expectations in the relationships beginning teachers have with students’ parents. The data consist of narrative interviews with 17 Japanese beginning teachers. Due to strong cultural and social norms prescribing appropriate social interactions, Japanese teachers have little leeway in negotiating parents’ expectations. The authors found that beginning teachers described facing three emotionally challenging expectations in their relationships with students’ parents: 1) they do not fully understand what is expected of them; 2) they are expected to turn to colleagues for help with difficult issues involving parents; and 3) they are expected to endure and learn from criticism. To cope with these emotionally challenging expectations, beginning teachers perform emotional labour. The article presents a wider understanding of teachers’ work as a relational practice and offers insights that can be used to move beyond the discourse that frames beginning teachers from a ‘deficit’ perspective.

This mixed methods study investigates novice teacher and coach survey responses from a two-year induction programme to learn more about what makes a good match. The authors qualitatively analyse comments from all novice teachers and coaches who were paired across years and find shared themes of structural, professional, and personality similarities as well as the importance of coaching support prominent throughout novice teacher responses. They also use logistic regression to indicate that novice teachers’ ratings of coaching skills and coaches’ beliefs about the induction programme fitting within vertical professional development were positive and significant predictors of perceptions of being well matched. Findings have implications for induction programmes on how to match their coaches with novice teachers to enhance teacher development.

This mixed-methods study explores the experiences and influence of induction on novice teachers. The authors quantitatively analyze survey data from over two thousand novice teachers and a thousand of their coaches through statistical comparisons and multiple linear regression analyses to explore whether structures of induction are associated with how teachers learn and develop in their pedagogy. Qualitative analyses of respondents’ open-ended responses guided by word cluster formations indicate a positive feeling about this induction program but revealed differing areas of focus between novice teachers and their coaches. Results indicate the importance of coaches, curriculum, and the learning management system in creating positive induction experiences. Findings from this study have implications for the influence and structural design of induction programs for novice teacher development.

This article examines the career trajectories of recent college graduates and career changers who became mathematics teachers in hard-to-staff schools through New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF). The goal is to understand the main patterns in their careers before, during, and after teaching. The study provides a portrait of the career trajectories and decision-making of more than 600 NYCTF mathematics teachers over a nine-year period. The study incorporates survey and retention data collected as part of a longitudinal research project on NYCTF mathematics teachers. The analysis of the teachers’ career trajectories is illuminated by descriptive statistics and qualitative analyses of teachers’ open-ended survey responses. The article deepens our understanding of teachers’ career decision-making as it unfolds over time. For example, it documents that the leavers emphasized different reasons for leaving NYC public schools, depending on when they left. The study also challenges conventional understandings of teacher turnover by finding consequential amounts of midyear and involuntary turnover and by demonstrating the stochastic nature of some teachers’ trajectories. It further shows that, although in many ways similar, the career trajectories of the career changers and recent college graduates differed in key regards; for example, although the career changers seem to have had greater trouble adjusting to teaching, they were more likely to remain in the district a decade after entry than the recent graduates. The discussion focuses on the implications of the study for recruitment and retention strategies that can ameliorate pressing teacher turnover and shortage issues. It posits that, given the high rates of turnover among NYCTF mathematics teachers, recruitment strategies focused on recruiting high-achieving recent graduates and professional career changers will not solve long-standing teacher turnover issues in districts such as NYC public schools. As such, districts need to focus on retention strategies. These would include, for example, training and induction tailored to meet the different needs and career goals of career changers and recent graduates.