New teachers are unprepared for school politics and the conflicts they experience with administrators, colleagues and policies. Research and practice on mentoring often ignore organizational contexts. This article explores these under-examined contexts, asking: (1) What do mentors need to know and be able to do in relation to school and district…

In this article, Betty Achinstein and Rodney Ogawa examine the experiences of two new teachers who resisted mandated "fidelity" to Open Court literacy instruction in California. These two case studies challenge the portrayal of teacher resistance as driven by psychological deficiency and propose instead that teachers engage in…

This article explores the possibility that state educational policies, involving accountability and instructional reform, and local district and school conditions interact with teachers' personal and professional backgrounds to shape two tracks of new teachers that reinforce existing educational inequities. The present 2-year study incorporated…