This article explores the relationships between elementary teachers’ career stages and their interpretation and implementation of mathematics education reform. This is done using (a) secondary analysis of data from a survey of several hundred teachers in California after the passage of statewide mathematics education reforms and (b) in-depth case studies of sixteachers implementing a reform-oriented mathematics curriculum. The author finds that teachers at different career stages differ significantly in their approaches to mathematics education reform. In particular, they differ in their willingness and ability to teach in reform-oriented ways, in their understandings of reform, and in how they integrate reform ideas into their current practices. This study has implications not only for the design of future education reform policies but also for the analysis and understanding of educators’responses to these policies.
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