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

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.