The purpose of this study is to examine the role of factors related to Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) in the relationship between what teachers profess to believe about teaching mathematics and what their enacted beliefs or instructional practices say they believe. In order to accomplish this, a framework is established that enables the researcher to characterize a teacher's overall beliefs about teaching mathematics based on his/her beliefs about six aspects of teaching. The six aspects are the teacher's role, the student's role, the content to be taught, the purpose of questions, the purpose of activity, and the evidence he/she accepts that indicates that students understand what they have been taught.

Using a multiple-case, qualitative research design, the researcher analyzes data collected from questionnaires, interviews, and observations in order to specifically discuss the impact of AIMS-related factors on instructional practices. Three junior-high mathematics teachers selected from a larger sample of teachers from a school district in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona served as cases for this study. Selection of the case teachers was made after a two-step process, and case teachers were selected who were representative of other teachers who participated in the study.

Findings from this study indicate that factors related to AIMS greatly influence teachers' enacted beliefs about the six aspects of teaching regardless of their professed beliefs. Specifically, teachers will come to believe that their role is to be a transmitter and that a student's role is to be a recipient in the teaching/learning process. In addition, the content of the test will strongly influence teachers' beliefs about what should be taught in class. Furthermore, teachers will come to believe that the purpose of questions is to assess their students' abilities to use skills and procedures and that the main purpose of activity in the classroom is to practice these skills and procedures. Finally, teachers will come to believe that the ability to reproduce procedures to arrive at correct answers serves as sufficient evidence that their students understand what they have been taught.