Contextual Affordances and Constraints: Supporting Beginning Teacher Agency in a Mathematics-Specific Induction Program

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Preparing and Supporting Beginning Teachers: The Role of Context and Culture in Teacher Preparation

Abstract

As beginning teachers encounter their first classrooms, they struggle to enact curriculum and negotiate expectations of local context with their visions of “good teaching.” This presentation explores how beginning teachers can be supported in agentically negotiating personal goals and professional contexts. We describe ways three first-year elementary teachers’ mathematics teaching was supported and constrained by local contexts and a university-based mathematics-specific induction program. Some supports provided by the induction program can be and sometimes were provided by local school contexts while other supports were possible because of the non-local nature of the program.

Authors

• Anne Swenson Ticknor, East Carolina University

• Catherine Stein Schwartz, East Carolina University