Caught in the crisis: Early career mathematics teachers’ perceptions of research and practice beyond Initial Teacher Education

Abstract

This study aims to represent six early career mathematics teachers’ perceptions of their experiences relating to their first steps into mathematics teaching posts leaving Initial Teacher Education (ITE) behind them. Situated in a time of unprecedented political intervention into frameworks for ITE and early career teacher development, which has been mandated explicitly for the first time, and when recruitment and retention is at crisis level, this interpretive practitioner research focused on specific aspects of the lives of the early career teachers in their own environment, with the aim to further understand the experiences they shared and to develop an understanding of the complexities of professional learning for early career mathematics teachers. The study uses a democratic pedagogy lens as a means of interrogating the early career teachers’ perceptions of how they developed their professional knowledge focusing on the ways they were able to interpret mathematics education research that informed their practice during the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and whether teacher education has empowered them as decision makers in their own classrooms. Through semi-structured interviews with the early career teachers at two points in their first year the findings were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis involving the use of data coding to develop themes which represented the social and political experiences the early career teachers described. This study highlighted tensions between mathematics education research and the political and policy driven regimes present in our education system which have directly impacted the early career teachers’ professional development opportunities and raised the question of whether mathematics teacher education is in crisis.