1.1 Environmental Factors

The first set of Bandura’s (2001b) SCT determinants are environmental factors related to new teachers’ context. I identified three themes related to environmental factors: new teachers’ challenges related scarcity of resources, overabundance of resources, and change.

Scarcity of resources manifested in the absence of curriculum, missing classroom materials, poor physical conditions of school, or a new teachers’ limited budget. Anne spoke at length and in detail about her urban school’s challenging physical environment. Her classroom is in a modular trailer that has air conditioning but lacks insulation for cold Midwestern winters. During the day, she has to keep her personal belongings in sealable plastic bags so that she does not inadvertently take bugs home with her. Amelia, as an itinerant music teacher serving several schools in a suburban district, lacks a dedicated music classroom and can teach only with whatever supplies she can find herself and carry with her.

On the other end of the spectrum, some schools did provide resources (e.g., curriculum, classroom supplies, technology, funds for graduate school), but challenges sometimes arose from overabundance. An oversaturation of resources sometimes overwhelmed new teachers. For instance, Hallie described the process of sorting through materials left behind by her predecessor:

I had a room chock full of like very old materials, like a bunch of garbage. There were some valuable things in there, but very few. So I had to spend multiple hours just cleaning junk out, things like an overhead projector things and other things that are just not helpful at all. But I found a couple like helpful resources for math and stuff.

For Julie, the overwhelming volume of resources was epitomized by one object in her classroom:

There’s a filing cabinet in my room that was in the corner; no one touched it. The teacher before the teacher I replaced had taught there for like 45 years. And that was his entire filing cabinet of work.

Julie took the time to look through the entire filing cabinet and was able to find a few useful resources. She moved the filing cabinet from the back corner of the classroom to beside her desk, and she began to mix in fresh assignments as well.

In addition to school-provided resources being overwhelming, new teachers also experienced them as constraining. For instance, Mike works in a wealthy suburban district and has been provided a detailed curriculum. However, Mike finds this environment to be stifling in its own way:

This is one of my biggest challenges. I feel very constrained. Especially in a high school math class, we have an insane amount of standards to cover. And standards are good, because you know, you should have certain goals to meet, and you should be able to say, “Today I did this objective,” whatever you want to call it. But when you have the amount that you have as an educator, it takes any wiggle room out of the equation… That is my biggest concern for my teaching career: that I will get burnt out because all the fun stuff is stripped out. The kids don’t actually want to learn it because of that, and it’s not even useful for them for the most part.

Mike observed that environmental factors go beyond material needs to include systemic issues of what is expected of educators generally and new teachers specifically: “These problems are stemming from a system that is starting well before students come to me.” Mike suggested these systemic issues cannot be solved by more or better induction supports: “I have all of the best supports that you can ask for as an educator. And I still have these problems.”

A third area of environmental factors involved change, disruptions, and uncertainty experienced by new teachers. On one hand, change is inevitable when transitioning into a new career, as was the case of each of these new teachers. Simone expressed this sentiment well:

I feel like I’m still a student, not just because I’m in graduate school. But education is always changing. There’s always something new. We go to professional development of how we can teach English language learners and how we can deal with, with social and emotional issues and trauma in your class. So I just feel like I’m always learning.

However, new teachers also reported additional challenges related to change. The transition into teaching seemed especially challenging for Julie and Wallace, who started as new teachers mid-year. Amelia, as an itinerant music teacher, did not find out her final teaching assignments until October. Anne experienced a high degree of personnel turnover, including her principal and her grade level partner teacher. Anne and Simone both described being handed new curricula each year, and the process of adjusting to a new plan never seemed to stop. Simone was also asked to pilot new curricula:

First year teaching, it was all new curriculum. And then, second year teaching, new science curriculum, rolling into the reading and writing curriculum, then I’m piloting a new math curriculum. So it’s a lot, yeah, trying to adjust to that…

New teachers described numerous effects of so much change, including Wallace’s description of a physical manifestation of his stress: “I was clenching my teeth so hard that my mouth was getting sore from it, but it was just me trying to get through everything.”