Urban Teacher Residency Program Research Articles

From “Outsider” to “Bridge”: The Changing Role of University Supervision in an Urban Teacher Residency Program

This qualitative research study investigated a faculty liaison (FL) model, an alternative to traditional field supervision implemented in an urban teacher residency (UTR) program. In the FL model, professors teaching in the UTR program were assigned to school sites rather than individual teacher candidates to observe and provide feedback, evaluate teacher candidate performance, and connect coursework and classroom practice. Results indicate strong support for the continuation of the FL model in lieu of traditional supervision. Specifically, the FL model supported teacher candidate learning, both in the field and in university coursework; and enhanced school-university collaboration. The authors provide an analysis into the FL model and recommendations for integrating full time faculty into school-based portions of teacher education.

Unpacking practice with clinical instructional rounds in the San Francisco Teacher Residency program

Clinical instructional rounds have recently gained national and international attention as a pedagogical innovation that can help school administrators, leaders, and sometimes teachers move past the impenetrability of siloed classrooms to study teaching and learning across school sites and even districts. While rounds are an increasingly widespread form of professional development for administrators and teachers, they are less commonly used in preservice programs with teacher candidates. This article describes how an urban teacher residency program strives to strengthen the connections between the fieldwork and the coursework of novice teachers through clinical instructional rounds within and across the educational settings in an urban school district. It also describes the findings from research into what candidates seem to learn by participating in instructional rounds and how this might impact their future practice. The findings suggest that rounds can be useful for helping teacher candidates develop deeper understandings of the educational systems where they will work, facilitate their learning of diverse teaching practices, and develop an appreciation of diverse student's strengths across contexts. They also suggest that rounds are not a silver bullet, and candidates can develop reductionist views of student ability and disjointed understandings about how school systems work. The implications of this research are discussed in terms of considerations for how teacher educators can employ rounds as a tool for deepening candidates’ understandings of students, classrooms, schools, and the systems that support urban youth.

Tensions of Reimagining Our Roles as Teacher Educators in a Third Space: Revisiting a Co/autoethnography Through a Faculty Lens

This co/autoethnography uses our lens as university faculty to examine how engaging in a year-long self-study with mentors nurtured a complicated third space where we could together begin to reimagine our roles as teacher educators. Two secondary faculty members and a doctoral assistant used co/autoethnography to revisit a collaborative self-study with mentors to better identify both the individual and programmatic complexities that arise when a third space is opened and we are invited to reinvent our perspectives and responsibilities as co-teacher educators. We ask two questions: What happens when faculty facilitate a third-space teacher education program with mentor teachers? How does this third space influence the teacher education practices in an urban teacher residency program? We present a series of tensions about our work together as teacher educators in the third space. They include professional into authentic relationships, authority into collaboration, collaborative agency into individual agency, and apprenticing to master teacher into apprenticing within a collective. Following findings about each tension, we discuss how we as faculty navigated each tension. Finally, we consider the implications of our work for all field-based teacher education programs.

Finding a third space in teacher education: creating an urban teacher residency

This paper describes an urban teacher residency program, the Newark Montclair Urban Teacher Residency, a collaborative endeavor between the Newark, New Jersey Public Schools and Montclair State University, built on a decades-long partnership. The authors see the conceptual work of developing this program as creating a “third space” in teacher education. We detail the ways in which we conceptualize epistemology and clinical practice in teacher education, and changes in the roles of the community, and P-12 teachers that occur in a third space. Providing an account of our messy and nonlinear process demonstrates the struggles of creating new spaces for teacher education. We believe the theory that informs our work, the challenges we face, and the strategies for meeting those challenges illustrate the tenuous and ever-evolving nature of doing work in the “third space.”

A Distributed Intelligence Approach to Multidisciplinarity: Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Complex Science Issues in Society

The scientific issues that face society today are increasingly complex, open-ended and tentative (Sadler, 2004). Finding solutions to these issues, not only requires an understanding of the science, but also, concurrently dealing with political, social, and economic dimensions that exist (Hodson, 2003). For example, 40 years after the first congressional hearing on climate change held by Al Gore in 1976, the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that climate change is still getting worse, despite efforts by governments, businesses, social actors such as Non-Government Organizations, and scientists. With the top minds in the world, across all disciplines, backed with government and corporate funding pursuing the same goal of resolving human impact on climate change, why haven’t we resolved the situation? What strategies might be employed to increase effective action? Author/Artist Bio Jarod Kawasaki is currently a doctoral student at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, his dissertation focuses on teachers' beliefs about the purpose of science education and their relationship to teachers' instructional practice. Kawasaki's research interests focus on ways that K-12 education builds the capacity of students to engage with science in their everyday lives. Kawasaki is interested in the design of learning environments that encourage students to creativity to address controversial and public science issues. Before graduate school, Kawasaki was a science teacher at an urban high school in Los Angeles and completed a MA in Educational Technology from Cal State Northridge. Currently, Kawasaki is working for the Teacher Education Program at UCLA, conducting research with a 5-year US Department of Education grant investigating the effectiveness of an urban teacher residency program in preparing pre-service teachers and evaluating teaching quality. Previously, Kawasaki worked on a Spencer Foundation grant that examined the use of student data by teachers to inform instructional decisions in small pilot school in Los Angeles and at the UCLA National Center for Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) developing assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards. Kawasaki currently lives in Culver City, CA with his wife and two daughters (5 years old & 6 months old). Dai Toyofuku was born and raised in Los Angeles, where he also lives and works. He has a profound interest in the cultures of animal and plant communities that share the Los Angeles urban landscape. The artist received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from the Claremont Graduate University. Dai has collaborated with biologists and other artists in order to explore the relationship between art and science. In 2011, he had his first solo show at Steve Turner Contemporary. In 2012, He and seven other artists collaborated with a biologist to create an exhibition supporting endangered species at the College Art Association's 100th annual Convention. He is currently working on a body of work combining the four seasons and the Japanese tea ceremony, growing an indoor California-native Bonsai garden, and cultivating plants to feed caterpillars endemic to Los Angeles. In the near future, he hopes to breed Neurergus kaiseri, a newt that is now extinct in the wild

The Urban Teacher Residency Program: A Recursive Process to Develop Professional Dispositions, Knowledge, and Skills of Candidates to Teach Diverse Students

To be prepared to teach in an urban setting, preservice teachers must exit their teacher preparation program with a professional disposition toward equity and social justice as well as the knowledge and skills required to meet the needs of all students in their classroom.

Mentoring in an Urban Teacher Residency: Mentors' Perceptions of Yearlong Placements

This qualitative study explored 8 urban mentor teachers' experiences and perceptions of mentoring in a yearlong field placement in an Urban Teacher Residency program. Results indicate mentors' and preservice teachers' joint work provided a context conducive for professional learning and contributing to a larger social justice mission. However, ongoing collaboration also produced tensions, some of which mentors had difficulty navigating. This study suggests that if extended field placements are to be an effective reform intervention, mentor teachers need professional support to maximize the benefits and to negotiate the complexities of collaboration.

Transforming Urban Schools: Lessons for America from an Urban Teacher Residency Program

Transforming Urban Schools: Lessons for America from an Urban Teacher Residency Program