Resources That Support Beginning Teachers' Ambitious Instruction

• In Event: How Novice Elementary Teachers Learn to Teach Mathematics and Reading/Language Arts in Ambitious Ways

Abstract

Objective. Policymakers increasingly expect beginning teachers to teach ambitiously. Research documents the influence of resources on novice teachers’ instruction (Grossman et al., 2000; Pogodzinski, Youngs, Frank, & Belman, 2012). This study examines how the availability and use of resources in first-year teachers’ school contexts informs their ambitious instruction in mathematics and English language arts (ELA).
Theoretical Framework. I ground this study in cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). CHAT conceives beginning teachers’ instruction as shaped by their goals, individual histories, available resources, and social interactions (Engeström, 1999). Whether novices teach ambitiously depends on the availability and norms guiding the use of material and conceptual resources from prior experiences, teacher preparation, and school contexts (Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999).
Data Sources and Methods. I use case studies of 16 graduates from five teacher preparation programs (TPPs) who were first-year teachers in 2016-2017. Participants completed three surveys and interviews and participated in observations of three mathematics and three ELA lessons. I used the Protocol for Language Arts Observation (PLATO; Grossman, Loeb, Cohen, & Wyckoff, 2013) to rate the quality of their instruction. I purposively selected participants whose teaching in each subject was highly ambitious in both subjects, one subject, or neither subject.
I double-coded interview data iteratively (Saldaña, 2015) to identify type and source of resources, creating data matrices to identify patterns. I created resource profiles for each case that I used to generate themes related to resource characteristics and the participants’ mathematics and ELA PLATO scores.
Findings. The clarity of districts’ subject-specific expectations was associated with the ambitiousness of beginning teachers’ instruction in each subject. Novices who reported clear expectations for mathematics, ELA, or both taught ambitiously in that subject(s), whereas those who reported unclear expectations in one or both subjects taught unambitiously in that subject(s). Social resources that offered guidance to beginning teachers were associated with ambitious instruction, while simple sharing of resources was more common among novices with unambitious instruction. These patterns were strongest in mathematics. Teaching candidates’ self-efficacy was associated with ambitious mathematics instruction, but not their ELA teaching. Interestingly, teaching self-efficacy decreased during their first-year compared to when they were teacher candidates, particularly in ELA. Classroom management was a significant hurdle for beginning teachers with the least ambitious instruction (low math/low ELA). Additionally, these novices were more likely to have student taught in districts with fewer students of color than where they taught in their first year.
Significance. This study highlights the organizationally-nested and subject-specific nature of beginning teachers’ instruction. This has implications for teacher education and induction. For districts, enabling novices’ enactment of ambitious instruction depends on expectations and coherence across resources. TPPs need to consider providing conceptual resources that will enable beginning teachers to use district and school resources ambitiously. Since they cannot control these resources, TPPs should consider the material and social resources they can provide novices who teach in districts with low instructional coherence.

Author

• Jillian M. Cavanna, University of Hartford