First-Year Teachers’ Challenges With Implementing Developmentally Appropriate Practices in Their Public School Classrooms

The first year of teaching has and continues to be fraught with challenges for early educators in public school contexts across the United States. A persistent problem that has been documented across the globe is the ability of novice teachers to engage in developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) with their students. We examine this issue through a case study that investigated how the first-year teachers in our study described: a) their conceptions of DAP with their students and b) their engagement in such practices during their first year of teaching in public school contexts. Our findings reveal the challenges and opportunities for growth as professionals in implementing DAP that emerged for these teachers in their first year of teaching. Through this analysis, we illuminate the spaces that might exist for teachers to think about and engage in DAP within public elementary school contexts and offer the chance to consider how such stakeholders as teacher educators and principals can better support novice teachers in conceptualizing and implementing more appropriate and equitable practices in their teaching.