Novices' Stress and Coping - Beginning Secondary Mathematics Teachers' Attempts to Teach in the Spirit of the NCTM Standards

by Gary Lewis

In this study, I observed and interviewed six novice
secondary mathematics teachers who were attempting
to implement the NCTM (1991) Professional Standards
for Teaching Mathematics. I found that, overall,
attempting such teaching added only modestly to
their stresses. One notable exception was that they
reported that managing classroom discourse
utilizing student mathematical thinking in central
ways was very demanding. I also found several new
types of stresses not previously reported in the
teacher stress research literature, some of which
related to novices' attempts to enact elements of
the NCTM (1991) Standards. Novices identified
socially-oriented coping resources as the most
effective in alleviating their teaching stresses.
Relying on their own experiences and ideas was
also important, particularly for those novices
without formally organized social resources (such as
a teacher learning community). The results suggest
that novices attempting ambitious teaching do so
because they have commitments that lead them to
persevere in such teaching and are able to find
resources to support them in those attempts.