Urban Teacher Education Program Research Articles

"Connecting the Dots” for Recruiting Secondary Science Teachers in Urban Schools: An Exploration of Career Choice for Undergraduate Science Majors

Despite critical shortages of secondary science teachers in urban schools, relatively little research has focused on the recruitment of undergraduate science majors to teach in urban contexts. This study utilized a retrospective narrative inquiry methodology to explore the career pathways of 14 undergraduate science majors into secondary science teaching. The primary data source was interviews that were conducted at the beginning of an urban teacher education program. Interviews were analyzed through the framework of social cognitive career theory (SCCT) to identify the characteristics, beliefs, and experiences that featured prominently in their narrativizations of their career pathway into urban science education. Findings highlight a non-linear process of career choice characterized by three themes: rejecting traditional science careers, reevaluating their interests and skills for teaching, and prioritizing socially oriented career goals. Implications for enhancing the recruitment of undergraduate science majors into urban science teaching include transforming undergraduate science majors to value teaching careers and taking a more community-based approach to science teacher recruitment.

Teach Like a Black Woman: A Trauma-Informed Black Feminist Praxis

When considering the traumatic, racialized educational landscape of the U.S., we turn our attention to the revolutionary consciousness that Black feminism provides in our conceptualization of trauma, suffering, and healing. Ultimately, we maintain that Black women educators (BWEs) enacting Black feminist pedagogies in their classrooms are uniquely positioned to advance our collective discourses, practices, and research on trauma and healing. Utilizing qualitative inquiry, we examine interviews from BWEs through the lenses of Black feminism and our holistic trauma framework. Findings reveal BWEs’ tools—love lessons and proactive, interactive, and reactive healing pedagogies. We conclude with recommendations for urban teacher education programs.

Walking the Talk: Employing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Teacher Education

Background: Teacher education programs (TEPs) have a mandate to prepare teachers qualified to educate culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. In addition, the demographic imperative compels TEPs to recruit preservice teachers from underrepresented communities; yet, just as youth of color are marginalized in schools, so too are teacher candidates of color (TCCs) marginalized in TEPs. Just as conventional TEP curriculums fail to decenter dominant social groups, so too do many teacher educators fail to enact asset-based pedagogy. A teacher quality gap and culturally rooted disenfranchisement persist. Purpose: I examine how TCCs are prepared to teach critically in demographically pluralistic schools and how one teacher educator of color attempts to close the teacher quality gap with a diverse preservice teacher cohort through the application of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). Although asset pedagogies are widely accepted as best practice in P–12 classrooms, there exists a dearth of research on their impact on postsecondary spaces. Moreover, multicultural education scholarship focused on the experiences of TCCs is limited. Research Design: Drawing from a larger critical ethnographic study of two diversity courses in an urban TEP, this article explicates one teacher educator’s application of CRP. I utilize the core tenets of CRP—academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness—to bridge the gap between theory and practice through illustrations of intentional critical pedagogy. Data were analyzed from field notes, interviews of students and faculty, course assignments, readings, syllabi, evaluations, and other relevant artifacts. Results: Findings indicate that modeling CRP is paramount to developing culturally relevant pedagogues and that making known the interdependence of CRP’s three fundamental pillars is central to transformative learning experiences for preservice teachers. Although challenging, CRP at the postsecondary level is an achievable endeavor that requires increased faculty innovation, reflexivity, and humility. Conclusion: The project offers practical applications of CRP that are adaptable to most teacher preparation courses. Recommendations include a call for more studies that examine the use of asset-based pedagogies in higher education, especially in TEPs.

The learner profile: piloting a tool to support contextualized understanding of the learner

ABSTRACT Deficit discourses in early childhood education position families of color, bilingual families, and families who are experiencing poverty as culturally and educationally deficient and are often reiterated through teacher education that relies on approximation of practice as modeled by a mentor teacher. Learning Teaching as an Interpretive Practice (LTIP) (Hollins, 2015) provides an assets-based framework for teaching that relies instead on a contextualized understanding of learners. Here, we examine our attempts as teacher educators to implement LTIP in our urban Midwestern early teacher education program. We focus on implementation of a tool for understanding individual children, the Learner Profile. Through case study, we analyze twenty learner profiles completed by five teacher candidates over the course of three semesters. Our findings suggest the Learner Profile guided teacher candidates toward more nuanced understandings of learners including multiple perspectives and unique aspects of lived experiences rather than over prescriptive developmental stages and categories. Still, we found understanding was highly mediated by the field placement context, teacher candidates’ own worldviews, and our facilitation as teacher educators. We conclude with implications for teacher educators who are interested in implementing the Learner Profile Tool and other tools for teacher education.

Untangling ideologies of disablement: the perils of the (in)visibility of dis/ability in urban teacher education programs

Research on urban teacher education (UTE) programs have studied teacher candidates’ (TCs) perceptions of urban communities and schooling, but have provided limited insights on how ideologies about dis/ability are entangled with race and other markers of difference, shaping TCs’ learning about urban education. In this paper, we present an analysis drawn from a 2-year qualitative study that answers the following questions: What social categories of difference are present in a UTE program’s curriculum? What ideologies related to dis/ability are utilized by TCs to describe urban education? We found that despite the UTE’s program’s strong emphasis on race and social justice, TCs not only drew from asset-based approaches but also from three interrelated ideologies of disablement to discuss students’ behaviors: individualism, medical, and personal tragedy. We provide recommendations for UTE programs and research-based on an intersectional approach to teacher education that foregrounds dis/ability.

Black Women’s Labor and White Ally Development in an Urban Teacher Education Program

The article uses events and narratives from the perspectives of Black women professors as examples of how allyship can be birthed and to illustrate the roles, responsibilities, and risks inherent in allyship development and work. It focuses on the labor needed to establish and sustain allyship as critical anti-racist educators in an Urban Teacher Preparation Program at a Historical White Institution. Dispositions of White allies are discussed, in addition to the various tensions allies may face in creating and sustaining equitable spaces and practices. Considerations for reciprocity are also offered to better support faculty of color.

The Double-voiced Nature of Becoming a Teacher in the Era of Neoliberal Teaching and Teacher Education

ABSTRACT As policy makers’ neoliberal reforms continue to impact teaching and teacher education, stakeholders across both fields of teaching continue to seek out alternative practices that assist educators in fostering democratic learning experiences for children in schools. However, many continue to struggle with the impact of these reforms on their teaching. Thus, there is a need to better understand how to support preservice teachers in authoring themselves so that they enter the profession in a manner that allows them to speak back to policy makers’ demands and engage in democratic teaching and learning processes with their students. The instrumental case study examined in this article investigated this issue by examining how a sample of preservice teachers in a large urban teacher education program authored themselves as teachers who spoke with and against policy makers’ neoliberal reforms. These findings demonstrate that while preservice teachers appear willing to pursue alternative visions of schooling they still seem to focus on individualized choices in avoiding policy makers’ reforms. Thus, there appears to be opportunities for teacher educators to support preservice teachers in developing the skills required to speak back to policy makers’ neoliberal reforms so that they can author themselves as the teachers they want to be.

On the Harm Inflicted by Urban Teacher Education Programs: Learning From the Historical Trauma Experienced by Teachers of Color

Throughout the country, urban teacher education programs ubiquitously employ the terms “diversity” and “social justice” on their websites. But—what do these terms mean and how do they influence (if at all) the programs represented by these terms according to the lived experiences of students of color in these programs? Through historical trauma theory, this study seeks to understand the experiences of teachers of color who graduated from urban teacher education programs that employed “diversity” and “social justice” on their websites. Through the analysis of interviews conducted with eight teachers of color, it unveils how teacher education programs dehumanize and exclude pre-service teachers of color, fostering psychological violence, promoting segregation and displacement, and cultivating economic deprivation. Findings show that the rhetorical and visual portraits of “diversity” and “social justice” on these programs’ websites are experienced by teachers of color as incongruent to their lived experiences within them. In particular, the outward facing diverse racial images do not reflect the populations these teacher education programs serve (mostly white) and the classroom and field experiences are dissonant from the commitments the programs espouse. Implications call for transforming teacher education from spaces where historical trauma is reproduced to spaces where racial healing and reconciliation can occur.

Hope and struggle to decolonize the preservice teachers’ mind: An urban teacher education program history

This academic year marks the tenth anniversary of the establishment of a five-year (bachelors and masters) urban teacher education program at a small, state institution in the northeast. This progr...

Sustainability of an Urban Teacher Education Program

Most of the teacher preparation programs in the United States adhere to a traditional curriculum that includes courses in foundations, liberal arts, methods, and student teaching. Too often these programs fail to provide opportunities for culturally responsive teaching where teacher candidates are encouraged to explore the role of culture in developing identity, providing space for learning, and building communities. A one-year Urban Teacher Education Program (UTEP) was created that focused on preparing teachers to work with disadvantaged, underprivileged, and marginalized children in urban schools. Teacher candidates received spaces to question their own thinking and reflect about issues related to (1) identity, (2) culture, (3) learning, and (4) assessment during this program. Four years after program completion, five participants from UTEP were selected for this study. The study used a mixed method approach to measure maintenance in transformation in their thinking. The results showed sustainability of the impact of the program four years later.

Friendly Resistance: Narratives from a Preservice Teacher of Color Navigating Diversity Courses

This qualitative study case study explicates how a preservice teacher of color in an urban teacher education program (TEP) peripherally engages critical pedagogy with perceived content irrelevancy and cultural conflict. Findings reveal how her maneuvering of corporatized model student behaviors is friendly yet subversive. These tactics result in successful matriculation in the TEP yet produce limited dispositional shifts with the focal participant. The project illuminates the challenges of being preservice teachers of color who do not culturally identify with marginalization or the growing diversity of K-12 schools. Challenging such normative assumptions and highlighting these experiences can inform the practices and policies of TEPs, especially the recruitment, retention, and development of teachers of color.

Rutgers Develops the Next Generation of Educators

Women in Higher EducationVolume 27, Issue 2 p. 13-13 Urban Teacher Education Program Rutgers Develops the Next Generation of Educators Lois Elfman, Lois ElfmanSearch for more papers by this author Lois Elfman, Lois ElfmanSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 February 2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/whe.20538Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume27, Issue2February 2018Pages 13-13 RelatedInformation

“Push it Real Good!”: The Challenge of Disrupting Dominant Discourses Regarding Race in Teacher Education

Despite efforts to redesign an urban teacher education program for social justice and equity, faculty became aware of racialized issues teacher candidates of color faced in the program. Therefore, this study examined the perspectives of teacher candidates to learn about how race is impacting teaching and learning for pre-service teachers. Overall, we discovered the dominant narratives, often called majoritarian stories (Love, 2004), were extremely difficult to disrupt and essentially remained largely intact for teacher candidates in our program. In addition, we found that majoritarian stories helped to maintain a level of superficiality for teacher candidates regarding issues of race. For this reason, we argue that there is a need to “Push it real good!” using Critical Whiteness to engage in deeper level work with teacher candidates in order to help develop strong teacher activists with the skills, dispositions, and knowledge necessary to substantially disrupt the inequitable status quo in education.

Community-Based Urban Teacher Education: Theoretical Frameworks and Practical Considerations for Developing Promising Practices

Traditional campus-based teacher education programs, located on college or university campuses, have been criticized for being removed from the “real world” of community life, and a number of programs have moved directly into urban communities in order for preservice teachers to become immersed in the life of the community. This article describes common theoretical frameworks and practical considerations for developing community-based urban teacher education programs and presents four programs that exemplify how community-based teacher education programs prepare future teachers to teach within the context of a community's cultural life. The article discusses theoretical frameworks of culturally relevant pedagogy, funds of knowledge, community cultural wealth, communities of practice, and the community teacher. It then raises several practical considerations that need to be addressed when preparing to initiate or reposition teacher education programs directly within the community: how much of the program should be located directly in the community, where should it be located, who should be the instructors, and who should participate in the decision-making process for the program. Finally, the four exemplary community-based programs presented exemplify how teacher education programs can prepare preservice teachers become community-embedded teachers.

Digital Storytelling as Racial Justice

Teacher education is replete with an overwhelming presence of Whiteness, a presence that if not explicitly interrogated indefinitely recycles hegemonic Whiteness. Needed are pedagogical strategies that expose the hegemonic invisibility of Whiteness. This critical reflection examines the utilization of digital storytelling by teacher educators of color to pedagogically deconstruct Whiteness in a predominately White, urban-focused teacher education course—a necessary deconstruction if these teacher candidates are to effectively teach urban students of color. Particularly, this article deconstructs four academic years of digital stories produced in a mandatory diversity course in an urban teacher education program and illustrates how digital storytelling itself promotes a critical self-revelation that confront Whiteness in White teacher candidates. The preliminary analyses suggest that digital storytelling is a racially just way of having White teacher candidates self-reflect on their own Whiteness in a multitude of ways, by (a) ending emotional distancing, (b) debunking colorblindness, (c) engaging emotions, and (d) sharing the burden of race.

Blocking CRT: How the Emotionality of Whiteness Blocks CRT in Urban Teacher Education

Although Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been applied to teacher education, it has yet to be meaningfully integrated into the core of urban teacher education programs. The reticence to embrace CRT is largely due to the overwhelming presence of Whiteness, despite Sleeter's (2001) demand for diversification. This theoretically interpretative article employs CRT's methodology of counterstorytelling to interrogate how Whiteness manifests itself in emotional ways, like fetishism and sentimentalization, and how such emotions are the root of resistance toward CRT in teacher education. Drawing from Black feminism and Critical Whiteness Studies, we utilize emotionally-based theories to illustrate the importance of CRT in teacher education, to identify barriers to CRT, and to recommend how teacher education can more genuinely reinvest in antiracism.

Practices of Compassionate, Critical, Justice-Oriented Teacher Education

In this cross-institutional, qualitative case study, two teacher educators in urban teacher education programs identify and analyze the components of our teacher education practice in relation to a vision of compassionate, critical, justice-oriented teacher education. Using Grossman et al.’s concepts of preparation for professional practice as an analytic tool, we illuminate some of our teacher education practices that (a) facilitated the development of relationships and community within our classes, (b) honored preservice teachers’ lived experiences and existing attitudes, (c) introduced preservice teachers to multiple perspectives of viewing the world, and (d) provided a vision of equitable, intellectually challenging teaching and learning. Drawing on our data, we offer a pedagogical framework that identifies key features of compassionate, critical, justice-oriented teacher education to inform research and practice. We highlight the contributions of this framework for justice-oriented teacher education and the inherent complexity of attempts to parse such fundamentally messy relational practice.

Experiences That Predict Early Career Teacher Commitment to and Retention in High-Poverty Urban Schools

Correlation analysis was used to analyze what experiences before and during teacher preparation for 72 graduates of an urban teacher education program were associated with urban commitment, first job location, and retention in urban schools for 3 or more years. Binary logistic regression was then used to analyze whether urban K-12 schooling, volunteer service, and student teaching in a high-poverty urban school predicted urban commitment, employment, and retention for at least 3 years in an urban school. The regressions revealed that all three factors predicted strong urban commitment and that urban commitment strongly predicted first job location and retention.

White Skin, Black Friend: A Fanonian application to theorize racial fetish in teacher education

In Black Skin, white masks (1967, Grove Press), Franz Fanon uses a psychoanalytic framework to theorize the inferiority-dependency complex of Black men in response to the colonial racism of white men. Applying his framework in reverse, this theoretical article psychoanalyzes the white psyche and emotionality with respect to the racialization process of whites and their racial attachment to Blackness. Positing that such a process is interconnected with narcissism, humanistic emptiness, and psychosis, this article presents how racial attachment becomes racial fetish. Such a fetish reifies whiteness by accumulating fictive kinships with friends of color; hence, the common parlance of ‘But I have a Black friend!’ The article, then, overlays this theoretical interpretation onto the subject of teacher education in the US, specifically urban teacher education programs that are predominantly comprised of white middle-class females who claim a desire to ‘save’ urban students of color. Ending with the dangers and hopes of a more humanistic friendship, this article offers emotional ways one can self-actualize the racialization process.

Supporting Students of Color in Teacher Education: Results from an Urban Teacher Education Program

This article describes an urban teacher education program on a predominantly White campus, in which 71% of the students in the program were students of color. This article details a qualitative study and highlights the structures of support most influential in the retention of students within the program. Findings suggest that a multifaceted approach to student support is most influential in retaining students of color. Influential support structures emerging from the data were: (1) cohort model; (2) focus on diversity; (3) high expectations; and (4) close interaction with faculty. The author makes the case that results can inform and be replicated in all teacher education and/or post-secondary education programs.