Urban Teacher Education and Teaching : Innovative Practices for Diversity and Social Justice

by Solomon, R. Patrick; Sekayi, Dia

• ISBN13: 9780805855029
• ISBN10: 0805855025
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-28
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbau

Summary

This volume illuminates the most pressing challenges faced by urban schools, teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher training programs and offers a range of insights and possibilities for urban teacher education and teaching. Covering issues spanning the broadly theoretical to the urgently practical, it goes beyond the traditional discourses in teacher education to focus on diversity, social justice, democratic schooling, and community building. What emerges is an emphatic message of hope for those committed to the ongoing project of improving urban teacher education and working in urban settings. Contributors from Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean bring rich and divergent knowledges, perspectives, and cultural experiences to their discussion of the three central themes around which the book is organized: *the conceptual framing of key issues in urban schooling; *pre-service teacher preparation for urban transformation; and *culturally relevant pedagogy and advocacy in urban settings. This book is intended for all students, practitioners, and researchers involved in urban education. It is appropriate as a text for student teaching and field experience seminars, and for courses dealing with social issues, educational policy, curriculum development, and multicultural teacher education.

Author Biography

R. Patrick Solomon is an Associate Professor and coordinates the Urban Diversity Teacher Education Initiative in the Faculty of Education, York University. He previously served as a school-community liaison with the Toronto public school district, providing better access to schooling for new and minoritized immigrant groups. His publications include: Black resistance in high school (1992), The erosion of democracy in education (2001) (with John Portelli), and Teaching for equity and diversity (2003) (with Cynthia Levine-Rasky). His current research includes a longitudinal study of graduate teachers, their strategies and challenges of implementing a diversity, and social justice pedagogy in urban schools and communities.

Dia Sekayi is currently the Faculty Chair of Research for the Ph.D. program in Education at Walden University. She has nearly a decade of experience as an academician (at Cleveland State and Howard Universities), and spent several years teaching mathematics and science to elementary level students in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Sekayi earned her Ph.D. in the Social Foundations of Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her work has been published and presented nationally and internationally.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Using representation to conceptualize a social justice approach to urban teacher preparation	p. 17
Developing educational collectives and networks : moving beyond the boundaries of "community" in urban education	p. 31
Gender, power, and accountability in urban teacher education : tensions of women working with women	p. 49
Pre-service teachers as border crossers : linking urban schools and communities through service learning	p. 67
Moving beyond institutional boundaries in inner-city teacher education	p. 89
Thinking outside the box : fostering racial and ethnic discourses in urban teacher education	p. 109
Critical pedagogy and authoritarian culture : challenges of Jamaican migrant teachers in American urban schools	p. 129
Confronting postcolonial legacies through pre-service teacher education : the case of Jamaica	p. 147
Student resistance to culturally irrelevant curriculum and pedagogy : the role of critical consciousness	p. 165
Integrating computer-facilitated learning in urban schools : challenges to the pre-service teacher	p. 179
The literary voices of urban adolescence : multifactor influences on textual interpretations	p. 195
The politics of advocacy, strategies for change : diversity and social justice pedagogy in urban schools	p. 207
The confluence of teacher education and inner-city activism : a reciprocal possibility	p. 227
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