As elementary teachers make mathematics curricular decisions, they navigate overlapping pressures from institutional policies, student needs, and disciplinary expectations. Drawing on Herbst and Chazan’s (2011) theory of practical rationality, we examined how five U.S. elementary teachers working in the same school navigated competing professional demands in the absence of strong disciplinary preparation. Specifically, we examined how teachers expressed their sense of individual, institutional, and disciplinary obligations, finding that they most often attended to individual and institutional obligations. Our findings reveal that elementary teachers found unique ways to navigate overlaps between disciplinary content and institutional obligations. These overlaps also supported teachers in attending to disciplinary obligations related to appropriate content and individual obligations to care for students’ cognitive needs (i.e., learning). On the other hand, teachers drew on obligations to attend to students’ emotional and behavioral needs, which overlapped with their duty to fulfill disciplinary practices such as problem-solving. We discuss the implications of these findings for situating elementary teachers’ attention to mathematics discipline within the theory of practical rationality by highlighting the interplay of disciplinary, individual, and institutional factors. We also offer recommendations for mathematics teacher educators and curriculum designers to help elementary generalist teachers navigate the complexities arising from overlapping and competing responsibilities.
