Urban Teacher Education Research Articles

Retraction Note: Two Sides of the Same Coin: Preservice Teachers’ Dispositions Towards Critical Pedagogy and Social Justice Concerns in Rural and Urban Teacher Education Contexts

Retraction Note: Two Sides of the Same Coin: Preservice Teachers’ Dispositions Towards Critical Pedagogy and Social Justice Concerns in Rural and Urban Teacher Education Contexts

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

AbstractDespite 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.

Conceptualizing White-Ability Saviorism: A Necessary Reckoning With Ableism in Urban Teacher Education

White saviorism is a well-documented phenomenon in the education literature. Particularly, researchers have made connections between white saviorism and teacher preparation for urban contexts serving Students of Color negatively impacted by legacies of systemic racism. Scholars are increasingly taking an intersectional lens to understand the ways in which racism and ableism intersect, yet much of the literature on white saviorism does not critically examine the role of ableism. In this meta-ethnography, we review extant qualitative research on urban teacher preparation in an effort to extend the analysis to include a robust examination of ableism and deepen our understandings of white supremacy in these spaces. To this end, we conceptualize white-ability saviorism as a more comprehensive and precise way to understand the dynamics at play in urban teacher preparation that contribute to white supremacy and perpetuate educational inequities for urban Communities of Color.

A Study on Teaching Competency of Teacher Educators in Colleges of Education

The research is in the form of a Descriptive survey method. The purpose of this study is to determine the Teaching Competency of Teacher Educators in Colleges of Education. It also contrasts Teaching Competency of Teacher Educators with two types of background variables, such as Gender and Locality. The study's findings reveal that the Male and Female Teacher Educators have similar mean scores of Teaching Competency. As well as Rural and Urban Teacher Educators, have similar mean scores of Teaching Competency.

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.

Criticalizing Teacher Perceptions of Urban School Climate: Exploring the Impact of Racism and Race-Evasive Culture in a Predominantly White Teacher Workforce

This study seeks to critically examine perceptions of urban school climate from a predominantly white teacher workforce and discuss the role that white identity, as the Dominant culture, plays in maintaining the status quo of racialized school climate. Participants included 145 teachers from a large southwestern urban setting. Teachers’ perceptions were measured by the Teacher Perceptions of Urban School Climate survey that includes six dimensions that are important aspects of urban school climate: (1) Leadership, Relationality, and Care, (2) Perceptions of Security and Safety, (3) Student Belonging, (4) Constructivist Teacher Practice, (5) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and (6) Educator Retention. Results indicate that elementary school teachers had more positive perceptions of urban school climate and beginning teachers were less positive about aspects of urban school climate. Implications stemming from the results are discussed including the role whiteness and racism play in teacher perceptions of urban school climate and teacher education.

The Urban Teacher Residency Model to Prepare Teachers: A Review of the Literature

Urban teacher residency (UTR) has been promoted as a promising model to prepare teachers for urban schools. In this review, we analyzed 56 peer-reviewed, empirical journal articles on UTRs published between 2010 and 2020, following the PRISMA guidelines. While this literature suggested UTRs’ potentials to recruiting and retaining diverse urban school teachers, there was limited evidence showing UTRs’ impact on graduates’ classroom teaching and the learning of their students. We also identified varied degree of coursework-fieldwork alignment and uneven mentoring support across programs. We concluded with research implications and recommendations for teacher educators and policymakers to advance urban teacher education.

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 Emerging Critical Pedagogies of Dance Educators in an Urban STEAM After-School Program for Black Girls

The preparation of urban educators has gained widespread attention across education policy, research, and practice. As US urban cities have become more diverse, the teacher workforce has not kept up, and the racial/ethnic demographics of students and teachers are disproportionately incongruent. In order to eradicate an education landscape that perpetuates white, middle-class ways of knowing and being, often at the expense of the cultural practices and cultural wealth of historically marginalized students of color, urban teacher education must be centered toward justice and rooted in critical pedagogies. The literature, albeit bleak, reveals that these perspectives must also be applied to urban dance education. Dance education programs have been significantly eliminated from urban schools over time, and although dance has historical roots in African and African diasporic cultures, dance education continues to be Eurocentric. This phenomenological case study examines the emerging critical pedagogies of undergraduate dance majors and minors who served as dance teachers in an urban Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) after-school program for 7-12-year-old Black girls. Findings reveal that (a) navigating race, place, and space; (b) mentorship and practice; and (c) critical reflection and self-efficacy were critical components of the urban dance educators’ emerging critical pedagogies. Implications for urban dance education and the broader field of urban education are provided.

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.

Far away, but yet so close. Urban teacher education and rural schools: directors’ point of view

ABSTRACTPolicymakers and teacher educators have long discussed whether specialised preparation of teachers who work in rural areas is necessary. The objective of this research is to learn more about teacher educators’ perspectives on the efficacy of urban-based teacher education in preparing elementary school teachers for rural contexts. The research was undertaken in a city in the Araucanía region of Chile. We conducted semi-structured interviews with the directors of three teacher education programmes. Those interviewed reported concerns about multi-grade classrooms often found in rural schools, which were understood to be an anomaly of proper elementary education. They also reported that the teacher education programmes they directed, though not aligned with teaching in rural schools, were sufficient in preparing new teachers. Preparation in teaching children in rural settings was not offered, or, in some cases, offered on the periphery as a programme option. This research reveals a disconnect between urban-based, urban-oriented teacher education programmes and the rural communities they aim to serve. It also adds to the broader discussion surrounding the preparation of teachers for diverse contexts.

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.

Where All the Good Teachers are Cape Verdean Americans: A White Teacher’s Identity Positionings in an Urban Elementary School

This study examines how a white language teacher???s understanding of race affected her teaching practice in an urban elementary language classroom with predominantly Cape Verdean immigrant students. The teacher relied on her experiences teaching English in Namibia and her experiences learning Spanish in the United States and Afrikaans in Namibia to ground her practice, which focused on cultural difference and standard English language teaching without specific reference to race in the context of the United States. I adopt the theory of LangCrit, an intersection between Critical Race Theory, Critical Language Studies, and Positioning Theory, to first demonstrate that the teacher???s justifications of her teaching practices were contradictory and conflicting, and in fact shows how, despite her good intentions, whiteness is imposed, assumed, or negotiated in the context of urban language classrooms. Based on these findings, I suggest possibilities for and constraints on using critical theory-oriented praxis in the classroom grounded in teachers??? personal experiences to help teachers interrogate and disrupt whiteness in language classrooms. Without greater support from critically-oriented urban teacher educators, many white teachers with the best of intentions will continue to struggle in their search for culturally responsive and empowering pedagogies for immigrant English learners of color in urban school settings.

Love as De/Colonial Onto-Epistemology: A Post-Oppositional Approach to Contextualized Research Ethics

In this essay, we describe our path toward a shared understanding of a love-based onto-epistemic orientation to de/coloniality. Our exploration includes the negotiation of our intersectional and entangled identities, subject positions, and understandings of research ethics in education. A de/colonial sensibility is critical in urban educational contexts given the predominance of uninterrogated westernized epistemologies in curriculum and instruction. We seek to bring awareness to the colonial ways scholarly knowledge is constructed, disseminated, and used in urban teacher and leadership education. We critique colonial assumptions from a post-oppositional approach that moves away from antagonistic discourse and toward considering possibilities for a transformative future. We enact our proposed ethical orientation through personal narratives, critical self-reflection, and prioritizing knowledge construction from (non)traditional spaces such as those created by our mothers. We conclude with points of consideration for those engaged in urban education research that center love-based onto-epistemologies and the lived realities of people who are traditionally minoritized, racialized, or ignored in academia.

“I Just Love Black People!”: Love, Pleasure, and Critical Pedagogy in Urban Teacher Education

With concern to critical pedagogy, the concept of love is fairly frequently (ab)used, yet under-theorized. In this exploratory study, I ask: How does a critical pedagogy of love—or critical pedagogical love—look, sound, and feel? Regarding feeling, how does a critical pedagogue engage the sensations of pleasure attendant to love? Lastly, how does the pedagogue invite love and pleasure into the pain-filled field of urban teacher education? Using Black feminist theorizing of love as an analytic filter, I investigate a university-based urban teacher educator’s navigation of the nexus of love, pleasure, and critical (specifically, antiracist) pedagogy. Extrapolating from the resultant narrative portrait, I consider the affordances of a critical pedagogy of love that accesses embodied pleasure, emphasizing how such a pedagogy might present racially marginalized persons—particularly urban teacher educators of Color—with opportunities for reprieve from the suffering that characterizes many of our experiences with/in teacher education.

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.