The teaching profession has always been a difficult one. This reality has only continued since the COVID-19 school closures as many teachers were attempting to return to "normal." For novice teachers (within their first five years), they did now know what normal was and therefore could not return to it. This group of teachers continue to…

The challenges first-year urban teachers face today are challenging while at the same time promising. It is challenging because there are concerns around training and development and readiness with an emphasis on classroom management. There is also hope and promise; it can be argued that the profession has more tools, resources, and access to…

The Chilean system is known worldwide for the detrimental effect of neoliberal policies on public education and school segregation (Bellei et al. 2022). Drawing on Sen's Capability Approach (1999), this paper examines how novice teachers of English balance the tension between the constraints of the social and educational systems (unfreedoms) to…

While computer science is widely recognized as crucial for all U.S. high school students, challenges persist for teachers' pedagogical, content, and culturally responsive-sustaining education. In this paper, we explore how a co-teaching model with an experienced CS instructor shaped three novice CS teachers' knowledge while implementing Advanced…

With this paper, we present an autoethnographic analysis of one traditionally trained teacher's experience working in an urban charter school with predominantly TFA-trained colleagues. To begin, we provide a review of literature that highlights the research landscape's hyper-focus on the experiences of TFA CMs, after which we describe the…

Drawing on literature around the first-year experiences of new teachers working in urban schools, this article examines the changing beliefs of brand-new urban educators as they progress throughout their first year as teacher of record. Using the Moje and Luke (2009) theoretical framework for identity formation and development, this study examines…

Background/Context: Mentors play a central role in preparing new teachers. This is multifaceted and demanding work, for which they rarely receive training, instead often relying on their own intuition or past experiences to guide their practice. As a result, most mentoring assumes the format of observation followed by feedback, emphasizing…

The focus of this research was to better understand the characteristics and behaviors of novice teachers in urban schools who return for another school year by examining their decisions to return for another year of teaching. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews of five secondary teachers from the same alternative licensure…

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary general music teachers' classroom management self-efficacy. Targeted participants were novice and experienced elementary general music teachers teaching in urban, suburban, and rural/small town settings who received a survey disseminated through the National Association for Music Education.…

This article describes findings from a qualitative, practically-focused study of how novice teachers perceive the relevance and effectiveness of their teacher preparation coursework. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with fourteen teachers at two highly diverse elementary schools in an urban area. Participating teachers were in their…

The first three years for new teachers can be quite challenging. Several school districts have induction programs to help these teachers develop their efficacies and remain in the classrooms. One of the main attributes of induction is mentoring. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the relationship between mentoring and…

Teachers are some of the most powerful people in a child's life. These professionals spend a significant amount of time educating students not only academically, but socially and emotionally. Yet, effective teachers do not stay in the profession long. A significant number of teachers leave the profession in less than five years. Retaining teachers…

The voices of teachers experiencing and reacting to highly-publicized testing scandals are rarely heard, despite high-levels of criticism and blame from many stakeholders. Drawing on Foucault's conception of "disciplinary power" ("hierarchical observation," "normalizing judgment," and "examination")…

In "Will Schools Change Forever," Waite and Arnett contend our educational system, and our society as a whole, have been confronted with two pandemics, COVID-19 and systemic racism (2020). Both of these pandemics have acerbated challenges schools must address and have exposed chronic inequities in educational systems. Our inquiry is case…

The purpose of this study is to share how African American/Black male K-12 novice educators navigated their own educational journey to become K-12 educators in an urban school district in central Alabama. An urban school district was identified from findings from the Census Bureau and had a school that sat inside an urbanized area and inside a…