In the United States and other countries around the world, K-12 school administrators are recruiting more novice teachers than ever. These novice teachers must learn to teach in a challenging context of new curricular standards, increasing accountability reforms, and growing student diversity. The challenges of learning to teach in the context of shifting reforms and demographics contribute to the persistent challenge of novice teacher recruitment and retention, especially in STEM subjects like mathematics. Indeed, among university graduates with similar levels of mathematics preparation, fewer choose to enter teaching than other careers. Furthermore, compared to novice teachers in other content areas, novice mathematics teachers may be more likely to leave the teaching profession or move to schools with better working conditions. When novice teachers, especially teachers of mathematics, leave the teaching profession or move to more affluent schools, it further disadvantages marginalized student populations by limiting their access to quality teachers. Given the challenges of recruiting qualified teachers in STEM subjects like mathematics and the ramifications of teacher turnover, it is increasingly important to understand the role of policy demands in shaping the experiences of novice mathematics teachers’ working in challenging contexts and how these policies may be better aligned to teachers’ development needs, thereby supporting long-term commitment to the teaching profession. In this study I used policy enactment and socialization frameworks to analyze under-conceptualized interactions between the macro-level education policy context and micro-level teaching practices of a sample of novice middle school mathematics teachers working in schools serving disadvantaged students in Michigan. I sought to describe the ways in which the backgrounds of these teachers, and the contexts in which they taught, mediated policies aimed at shaping their teaching practices. Furthermore, I sought to illustrate how the teachers’ backgrounds and contexts were related to their recruitment, success teaching diverse students, job satisfaction, and intention to remain in the teaching profession. This study draws from data collected for the cross-national proof-of-concept study known as the First Five Years of Mathematics Teaching, or FIRSTMATH. The main data for this dissertation comes from in-depth interviews from a focused group of four novice middle school mathematics teachers. The interview data is complemented by data from a small sample of secondary novice teachers of mathematics to describe their backgrounds, teaching contexts, and practices. I argue that while it is expected that better prepared teachers recruited to work in supportive school environments and whose values align with education reforms may be better able to demonstrate practices that align with policy reforms, express greater job satisfaction, and may choose to remain in the profession, this study begins to reveal that other factors having to do with teachers immediate practices (e.g., ability to manage classrooms, plan and deliver effective lessons, and improve student learning) are more powerful influences on how successful they feel as teachers and may, in turn, affect their long-term intentions to stay in teaching.
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