Urban Teachers Research Articles

The Influencing Factors of High School English Teachers Choosing Different Teaching Media

The issue of high school English teachers' selection of teaching media has garnered widespread attention. However, there remain significant gaps in understanding the influencing factors. This paper analyzes the determinants behind teachers' choices using grounded theory and three-level coding, incorporating interviews with educators from both first-tier cities and county towns in China. The findings reveal substantial disparities in resource availability, technological proficiency, and institutional support between urban and rural schools. Urban teachers benefit from abundant resources and robust technical support, which facilitate higher technological proficiency and more effective media integration with curriculum goals. Conversely, rural teachers face challenges with basic access to technology and limited professional development opportunities. Based on these findings, this paper proposes several recommendations to optimize the use of teaching media: enhancing resource availability through increased funding and community support, improving technological proficiency via targeted professional development, strengthening school support with dedicated IT staff and flexible funding policies, and aligning media with curriculum needs to enhance student engagement.

Exploring interactive behaviours of urban and rural teachers in blended synchronous classrooms: Insights from a proposed interaction analysis framework

Blended synchronous classrooms (BSCs) play a critical role in narrowing the educational gap between urban and rural areas in China, promoting educational equity. In BSCs, the quantity and quality of interactive teaching behaviours of urban and rural teachers may significantly influence the learning experiences of students in both urban and rural settings, and they are supposed to be different from interactive teaching behaviours that happen in traditional classrooms. However, there is limited research on the characteristics of such interactive teaching behaviours in BSCs. To address the gap, this study first proposed an interaction analysis framework for BSCs (IAF4BSCs) and then examined the interactive teaching behaviours of urban and rural teachers in BSCs using this framework, along with various learning analytics methods including lag sequential analysis, frequent sequence mining and thematic analysis. The data analysis yielded the following results: (1) Urban teachers exhibited more speech behaviours such as lecturing and providing immediate feedback, whereas rural teachers engaged more in non-speech behaviours like classroom patrols. (2) Despite the expectation for urban teachers to interact equally with urban and rural students in BSCs, they predominantly focused on urban students. (3) Urban teachers demonstrated diverse interaction sequences with both urban and rural students, whereas rural teachers primarily interacted with rural students. (4) Interviews with teachers and students revealed both positive and negative aspects of interactive teaching behaviours in BSCs. Based on these findings, the study proposed three pedagogical recommendations to enhance interactive teaching behaviours in BSCs: increasing interactive participation, integrating technology more effectively and emphasizing post-class assessment.

Bridging the Gap: Exploring Urban High-Needs Teachers’ Perceptions of Online Teaching Readiness and the Digital Divide

This research study investigated the perspectives of urban K-12 educators regarding the challenges they confronted when endeavoring to implement online learning effectively. The quantitative investigation involved 204 full-time urban teachers in a Midwestern state, all completing a researcher-developed questionnaire. The findings illustrated that participants encountered diverse obstacles, encompassing aspects related to readiness, along with external and internal factors. Educators identified a need for more time for crafting impactful online lessons as the most prominent barrier to preparedness. Respondents selected dependable student access to the internet at home as the primary external factor influencing their capacity to instruct in a virtual setting. The findings offer a specific perspective and an opportunity to stimulate dialogues concerning the provision of resources to enhance preparedness. By cultivating a deeper comprehension of how urban educators perceive their aptitude for online teaching, this study empowers current educators, educational leaders, and teacher preparation faculty to formulate more contemplative curricula. Future research should expand across multiple states to better equip aspiring educators and keep practicing professionals informed about empirically supported best practices.

Professional practice competence of primary school physical education teachers

ABSTRACT This study examined the professional practice competence (PPC) of primary school physical education (PE) teachers. Participants of the study were 382 availably selected primary school PE teachers in Amhara Region, in Ethiopia. Results revealed that, except for their lesson planning (LP), PE teachers’ instructional assessment (IA); their ability to create and maintain a safe and supportive learning environment (CMSSLE), and their overall PPC were low. However, female PE teachers performed their LP better than male teachers. Conversely, female PE teachers, degree holders, beginner and junior teachers, and rural PE teachers demonstrated lower proficiency in IA compared to others. The results also indicated that no significant differences were found in CMSSLE between male and female teachers, rural and urban teachers, and diploma and degree – holder teachers. Accordingly, the regional education bureaus, zonal education departments, and teacher education institutions have to pay due magnanimity and precaution while hiring, training, and deploying PE teachers in different areas of the nation. For the professional development and professional practice competence of PE teachers, need-based and continuous on-the-job capacity-building training should be designed by the concerned education policymakers.

Communities of practice and the elevation of urban elementary teacher discourse about critical pedagogy of place

Children who live in under-resourced communities and attend under-resourced schools deserve access to high-quality teachers and educational opportunities to support their success and well-being. This study emerged from a professional development (PD) for urban teachers working in such schools, to expand educational opportunities for elementary students through outdoor science teaching. Engaging frameworks of communities of practice (CoP) and critical pedagogy of place (CPP), this critical ethnographic study investigates how urban elementary teachers engage in discourse about critical issues of place. Additionally, the investigation seeks to understand how a CoP supports such discourse. The primary data for this study were multiple sets of researcher field notes collected from participant teachers during virtual spring and in-person summer PD. Over the course of the PD, participants shifted from viewing their outdoor teaching spaces with a deficit perspective to an asset-focused one. As they visited one another’s teaching sites, the CoP the teachers were a part of created opportunity for discourse about social justice linked to issues of place within their particular school neighborhoods. The ability of urban elementary teachers to connect social justice to issues of place and to the teaching of science has implications for countering the injustice that characterizes many urban communities in the USA and elsewhere.

Predicting Teacher’s Information and Communication Technology-Enabled Education for Sustainability Self-Efficacy

This study focused on the development of a teacher self-efficacy measurement addressing the contextualization of information and communication technologies (ICTs) with education for sustainability (EfS) using principal component analysis. Furthermore, this study, with the participation of 1815 teachers, examined the predictive value of some hypothesized predictors of the ICTeEfS self-efficacy construct such as gender, school setting, years of teaching, knowledge of education for sustainability, knowledge of ICTs, and experience in using ICTs to support the integration of education for sustainability in teaching and school curricula using multiple regression analysis. The research results revealed that gender did not explain any statistically significant variance of teachers’ ICTeEfS self-efficacy; contrary to this, teachers possessing a high level of knowledge on issues about sustainability and ICT competence explained most of the extracted variance. However, a gap remains in utilizing these skills pedagogically. This study also discusses the varying levels of self-efficacy among teachers based on their workplace location, finding that urban teachers demonstrate higher self-efficacy compared to their rural counterparts. This could be attributed to the disparities in resources and support systems, thereby affecting their capacity to employ ICT in EfS effectively. It was also found that novice teachers exhibited higher predictive power to ICTeEfS self-efficacy, possibly due to their recent exposure to ICT training. This study assumes that a profound understanding of EfS, coupled with ICT tools, bolsters the creation of contextualized curricula and enriches the teaching and learning experience towards sustainability.

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

Exploring Science Teachers’ Belief towards Inquiry Based Teaching Learning Activity at Grade –VI

The National Curriculum of Bangladesh (2012) recommends student-centric IBT (IBT) learning activities in the science classroom. However, teaching science in Bangladesh is hardly follows the instructions of curriculum, and most teachers are found not to place adequate emphasis on involving the students in the inquiry process. A possible reason might be science teachers’ belief. The focus of the research questions is to find out firstly, the beliefs of both urban and rural sixth grade science teachers and secondly, the differences between genders and lastly to explore the challenges of IBT. Thereby, a sequential explanatory mixed method was adopted for this study. The participating teachers were from both rural and urban areas. An interview was taken to support statistical and quantitative data for an in-depth explanation. The result revealed that teachers from both urban and rural areas have positive beliefs towards inquiry, and there is no significant difference between urban-rural and male-female teachers. In the case of urban teachers, the challenges were time and classroom management, but not for rural teachers. This study recommends that stakeholders use the inquiry instruction, reshape the training, and provide the teachers with the necessary opportunities for professional development programs in an effective way. Teacher’s World: Journal of Education and Research, 49 (2),135-149

ATTITUDE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS TOWARDS INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM AT ELEMENTARY STAGE

The present study has made an attempt to find out the attitude of elementary school teachers towards inclusive classroom. Teacher’s attitude has a significant role in implementing the inclusive education in classroom.The populationof the study comprised of all the elementary teachers of Puri district. Out of this, 70 teachers were selected through incidental sampling from 20 schools of Nimapara Block of Puri district. Teachers’ attitude towards inclusive classroom was studied on the basis of three demographic variables i.e. locality, qualification and experience. The study was descriptive in nature and two tools (attitude scale and questionnaire) were used for data collection. The findings of the study revealed that (i) There is no significant difference in the attitude of rural and urban teachers towards inclusive classroom (ii) No significant difference is foundin the attitude of more qualified and less qualified teachers towards inclusive classroom and (iii)No significant difference isfoundin the attitude of more experienced and less experienced teachers towards inclusive classroom. Moreover, 90 percent teachers’ perceived inclusion is a desirable educational practice as inclusive classroom facilitates participation, encourage cooperation and enhance learning achievement of students. Only 10 percent teachers perceived inclusion negatively. The study has analysed some of the barriers to the development of successful inclusive practices and suggested the ways for overcoming these difficulties and to reconsider the roles, responsibilities and identities of teachers.

"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.

Fostering young children’s scientific practices in urban and Indigenous areas: an investigation of instructional strategies

ABSTRACT This study examined children’s improvement in scientific practices, teaching effectiveness and the interplay of teaching and performances in Taiwan. Five teachers from two urban and two Indigenous classes were invited to implement a science learning module. They taught 73 children with an average age of 5 years and 8 months. Each child took a performance assessment of scientific practices before and after the learning module. Independent samples t tests and ANCOVA were employed to compare the performances of children in the two groups. Teachers’ lessons were videotaped and transcribed. Two coding schemes, teachers’ strategies and children’s practices, were developed and quantified to measure teaching effectiveness and analyse the interplay between two factors. We found that similar children’s improvement and teaching effectiveness provided a base for comparison of teachers’ instruction. Multiple strategies were used to guide urban children to make a plan and Indigenous children to share their investigation. Additionally, urban teachers tended to use strategies such as asking simple questions and reconciling disputes, while their counterparts often connected lessons to children’s experiences and guided them to compare and contrast. The findings shed light on effective early science instruction that responds to children’s cultural backgrounds, developmental needs and learning contexts.

Exploring student and teacher perceptions of the ideal teacher in Russia

ABSTRACT To improve current teacher education and teacher evaluation practices it is important to collect and critically examine different perspectives on who the ideal teachers are. The present study explores and compares how the ideal teacher is conceptualised by students and their teachers. Data were collected from 53 high school students and 16 of their teachers in urban and rural schools in Russia using an exploratory mixed-method study. The results indicate that students saw teachers’ ability to recognise students’ individual differences but treat everyone equally as the two most important teacher qualities. Teachers, however, attributed the most value to professionalism and ability to follow ethical principles. In addition, rural teachers self-assessed their own teaching quality more favourably than urban teachers while both rural and urban students gave similar ratings to the quality of teaching provided by their teachers.

Staying Close to Home: A Descriptive Analysis of the High School Graduates Who Return to Teach in Their Home District

Given urban school and district administrators’ historical challenges with recruiting and retaining a high-quality, racially diverse teacher workforce, there is a need to better understand the factors shaping why graduates return to teach in their home district. This descriptive study examines the high school students who returned to teach in their home district—a large urban district in the southeastern United States. White female, economically privileged, and higher achieving graduates returned to teach at the highest rates, although notable differences by race/ethnicity were observed. Implications for urban teacher recruitment are discussed.

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.

Increasing Minimum Teacher Salaries: Opportunities and Drawbacks Across Geography and Race

Following record-high public support for improved teacher salaries, many states initiated a variety of pandemic-era reforms to teacher compensation policies to improve teacher morale and retention. In this article, we examine a minimum teacher salary reform in Missouri, a state home to a diverse geographic landscape including major metropolitan areas and large rural regions. On the one hand, we estimate eligible teachers would receive sizable salary increases averaging almost eight percent. Conversely, these teachers were located almost exclusively in the state's rural areas, effectively excluding most urban teachers and students and, due to the state's non-white ethnoracial concentration in urban metropolitan areas, virtually all of the state's non-White teachers and students. As states craft policy reforms to support their teacher workforces, attention must be devoted to the magnitude and the distribution of funding to ensure its equitable allocation across teacher and student characteristics and district urbanicity.

Teaching Competencies Based on Comparative Assessment at Diverse School Levels

Effective and high-quality education is greatly dependent on the teacher's competence. Teaching competency encompasses the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and professional attributes necessary for an individual to effectively fulfill the duties of a teacher at the expected level. This research aims to examine the teaching competencies of teachers in schools with different educational levels. The researcher employed a quantitative survey methodology to investigate the teaching competencies of teachers in public schools in Multan. A stratified sampling method is employed to choose a sample of 1009 teachers that accurately represents the geographical distribution (location) of schools. A self-developed questionnaire was used to collect the data. The data collected has been analyzed using descriptive statistical techniques such as frequencies, means, and standard deviation, as well as inferential statistical techniques like t-tests and ANOVA. The main findings of the study indicate that teachers demonstrated competence in various domains, such as planning of the lesson, presentation of the lesson, lesson closure, lesson evaluation, and classroom management. The results also indicated that the teaching competencies of teachers vary greatly depending on the location of the school but do not vary significantly based on their academic, professional qualifications, or school levels. Urban teachers have better teaching competence in comparison to rural teachers. The study can be repeated on a large-scale sample by assessing other teaching competencies across different academic levels. Workshops and trainings should be provided for public school teachers to strengthen their teaching competencies.

Knowledge of Oral Prophylaxis and Dental Check-up Amongst Primary School Teachers in Lagos State: An Urban-rural Comparative Study

ABSTRACT
 Background: Oral health knowledge of school teachers will influence the success of the strategy of the National Oral Health Policy at the Community level.
 Aim: This study aimed to assess and compare the oral health knowledge in Urban and Rural areas of Lagos State.
 Methodology: A cross-sectional study, using a multistage sampling technique to select 200 primary school teachers in both urban and rural areas. A pretested, self-administered questionnaire was used. Data was analysed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive and crude odd ratio were used, and p-value ⩽0.05 is significant.
 Result: The mean age of the respondent is 39±10.92 and 47±7.56 for rural and urban areas respectively. More teachers were females in rural and urban areas. The ever-married were majority in both rural and urban areas. Majority had National Certificate of Education in rural and urban areas. Urban teachers [55%] had adequate oral health knowledge and 63% in the rural had inadequate oral health knowledge. Crude odd ratio revealed a significant association between geographical location and oral health knowledge [p=0.0102; OR=2.081]; marital status [p=0.0204; OR=0.26] and teaching experience [p=0.0442; ≤10years, OR=1.533; ≤15years, OR=2.130 and ˃16years, OR=3.179]. 
 Conclusion: Primary school teachers in urban area showed adequate oral health knowledge than their counterparts in the rural area of Lagos State.

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.

Social perception on the integration of children with special educational needs in mainstream education

The inclusion of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) within the general education system is a complex and persistent issue, considering that although educational policies and national legislation affirm support for the principle of inclusion, it is often implemented only at a declarative level. In the theoretical part, the evolution and progress of inclusive education at the international level was addressed, emphasizing the significant contribution of the United Nations Organization and various international conferences in promoting the individual rights of people with special needs. Another aspect considered the integration of students with special educational needs into the mainstream educational system, highlighting the crucial role and support offered to them. It is also emphasized the importance of the continuous professional development of teachers and the active involvement of parents in the educational process, as central pillars in the promotion of effective inclusive education. The methodology applied in the study regarding the integration of students with SEN in the Romanian educational system has as its main objectives the identification and analysis of teachers' perceptions and attitudes towards the integration process, the differences found between teaching staff from urban and rural environments, as well as examining the correlation between teachers' optimism and their perspectives on inclusion. Another important goal of the research is to identify barriers to the effective implementation of current and future public policies related to inclusive education. The research instruments used include an original questionnaire, entitled „Teachers' Beliefs and Attitudes about the Integration of Students with SEN”, intended to assess teachers' perceptions of inclusion, and an optimism measuring instrument, composed of 48 items, used to assess the level of optimism of the respondents. The sample of the study was made up of 60 teaching staff, aged between 25 and 45, divided into two groups, depending on the environment of origin (rural/urban). The analysis of the collected data indicates a greater predisposition towards acceptance and positive attitudes towards inclusion on the part of teachers from the urban environment, compared to their counterparts from the rural environment. Also, the results emphasize the existence of a positive correlation between the level of teachers' optimism and their attitude towards the inclusion of students with SEN. In conclusion, the findings of this research emphasize the significance of increasing the professionalism of teachers in supporting inclusive education and reveal notable disparities between rural and urban teachers in terms of the integration of students with special educational needs.

The unified state examination in mathematics in urban and rural schools: The impact of the 2020-2021 pandemic

This mixed methods study investigates the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on outcomes and perceptions related to the high-stakes unified state exam (USE) mathematics assessment in Russia. Quantitative descriptive analyses of USE scores from 2018-2021 revealed statistically significant distributional differences over time, with progressive increases in higher performance tiers. However, while a positive trend was discernible, strength of association tests indicated it was marginally moderate across years. Stratified pass rate analyses illuminated between-group variances, with specialized schools strongly rebounding after initial 2020 declines observed universally. To gain stakeholder insights, surveys were administered to students and teachers from urban versus rural regions. Attitudes regarding the mandatory USE removal diverged between groups; optimism permeated small rural schools despite hardships, while skepticism was pronounced among urban teachers citing accountability concerns. Stress perceptions revealed dissonances signaling wellbeing impacts. Overall, while achievement markers show positive trajectories, attitudinal variations based on school-types underline social dimensions shaping high-stakes test experiences. Results implicate targeted support policies and context-sensitive analytical approaches for optimal crisis mitigation. Granular investigations of less-understood equity gaps, expanding methodologies and detailed demographic profiling would enrich these findings. By quantifying exam trends alongside experiential nuances, the study develops a contextualized understanding of mathematical assessment transformations, informing localized continuity planning for uncertain futures.