How Beginning Teachers' Enactment of Ambitious Mathematics Instruction Seems to Be Influenced by Mathematics Teaching Self‐Efficacy, Perceived Collective Responsibility, and Feedback on Instruction

ABSTRACT In this mixed methods study, we carried out quantitative analyses in order to examine how 80 beginning elementary teachers' enactment of ambitious mathematics instruction seems to be affected by their levels of mathematics teaching self‐efficacy, their perceptions of collective responsibility among teachers at their schools, and feedback they received from principals, instructional coaches, and mentor teachers. We observed each teacher teach up to three mathematics lessons during their first year of teaching. We used the Mathematics Scan (M‐Scan) classroom observation instrument to analyze observations of teachers' implementation of ambitious mathematics instruction. We found that when novice teachers perceived high levels of collective responsibility, they were more likely to receive higher M‐Scan scores for lesson coherence and representations and higher overall M‐Scan scores. In addition, when beginning teachers had higher levels of mathematics teaching self‐efficacy, they were more likely to receive higher M‐Scan scores for lesson coherence. At the same time, we found that feedback from principals, instructional coaches, and mentor teachers was negatively associated with novices' M‐Scan scores for representations and overall M‐Scan scores. The qualitative portion of this study explored reasons for the significant negative association that we found between feedback and beginning teachers' enactment of ambitious mathematics instruction.