Scholar-Practitioner Reflections on the Urban Education Contexts of Race and Social Class in the Current Climate of Standards and Accountability
Th e complexity of urban education continues to be a challenge for urban educators. Th is paper explores the urban education context of race and social class in the current climate of standards and accountability through the refl ections of two public school scholar-practitioners. First, the fundamental tenets of scholar-practitioner leadership are presented in the context of a critical pragmatic praxis. Th e perspectives of two Philadelphia scholar-practitioner urban educators in their attempts to deal with urban educational complexity in relation to the infl uences of race, social class, and the standards and accountability mandates are presented. Th e one educator is a charter school Social Studies Department chairperson, and the other is the academic facilitator for a tech prep consortium at a Philadelphia community college. Additionally, both educators discuss how the scholar-practitioner concept positions them to better deal with the complex challenges of urban education.
Preservice Teachers’ Learning about Cultural and Racial Diversity
Several essential interactions or experiences that had an influence on preservice teachers’ learning and understanding about urban education and diversity are described and discussed. In particular, the author introduces a developmental typology that was used to analyze the preservice teachers’ learning and understanding as a result of a course designed to help preservice teachers develop the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and attitudes necessary to teach in highly diverse and urban school contexts. These developmental interactions that made a critical difference in the preservice teachers’ learning included cultural and racial awareness and insight, critical reflection, and a bridge between theory and practice. Understanding the influence of courses in teacher education that endeavor to provide learning spaces for preservice teachers is especially important as we document the most salient ways to provide all prospective teachers with what they need to make meaningful and significant differences in P-12 urban classrooms.
Why Is Classroom Management So Vexing to Urban Teachers?
Why is classroom management especially problematic for urban teachers, and why has research yielded so few helpful answers to this question? In this article I take up both questions, suggesting that the answer to both emanates from the same source: the reliance on deficit paradigms to explain underachievement of students who have historically not been served well by urban schools. I explain why teachers who create orderly classrooms that are academically demanding must establish and reinforce social norms in their classrooms that contravene the deficit paradigm, the dominant ideology of most urban schools. The article concludes with an examination of how my theory is illustrated by reframing, a technique for changing problem behavior in schools.