Comprehensive Urban Education

This text presents a compassionate view of teaching in an urban setting with practical suggestions, recommendations, and examples for powerful and effective teaching aimed at improving student academic performance. Each chapter explores major considerations related to educating students of diverse cultures typical of urban classroom settings. Preservice teachers are able to better understand the complex social, academic, emotional, and economic factors that define today s urban classrooms. The needs of urban schools -their students, teachers, community supporters, and stakeholders -are identified and various strategies are explored. The authors' combined experiences represent over a half-century of dedication to improvements in diverse classrooms that ensure best practices for effective instruction. Dr. Patricia Kopetz, Associate Professor of Graduate Studies Education, is an experienced teacher and university professor and administrator. Dr. Anthony Lease, is presently an Associate Dean and is an experienced teacher, principal, school superintendent, and university instructor/administrator. Dr. Bonnie Warren-Kring, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, is an experienced teacher and university Urban Education Director. All are active in Urban Education research and instruction at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga."

This timely book exposes the complexities and realities facing urbanness and urban schools that are inadequately funded and denigrated, along with students who continue to be misidentified, misassessed, miscategorized, misplaced, and misinstructed by illprepared and unprepared educators and service providers. The text very successfully demonstrates the comprehensive nature and connectedness of problems and prospects in urban education. This book will be an added resource to researchers, scholars, educators, and service providers. It should be an excellent required text for graduate and undergraduate courses in all branches of education. Addition-ally, the book will be of interest to education administrators at all levels, public school teachers, policy makers, and change agents. The thirteen chapters discuss and explore the following primary topics:• Urban education and the quest for democracy, equity, and excellence• Educating urban learners with and without special needs• Personnel preparation and urban schools• Teaching and learning in urban schools• Educational leadership in urban schools• Insights into educational psychology and what urban practitioners must know• Managing violence in urban schools• Financing urban schools• Reducing the power of “whiteness” in urban schools• Promises and challenges of building and the future perspectives of urban education.

"Urban Teaching in America: Theory, Research, and Practice in K-12 Classrooms is a brief but comprehensive text that provides undergraduate and graduate students in Education with an overview of urban teaching. The book synthesizes the work of urban education theorists, researchers, and practitioners into one place. Organized around eight authentic questions, the book offers preservice and inservice teachers opportunities for critical reflection and problem-posing not often seen in comparable course texts. This text supports faculty who are looking for increasingly creative approaches to exploring key educational issues with their students"--

Maintaining that urban teaching and learning is characterized by numerous contradictions, this book proposes that there is a wide range of social, cultural, psychological, and pedagogical knowledge that urban educators must possess in order to engage in effective and transformative practice. It is necessary for teachers in urban schools to be scholar-practitioners, as opposed to bureaucrats who only follow rather than analyze, understand, and create. Ten major sections cover the myriad issues of urban education as it exists today: context of urban education, race and ethnicity, social justice, teaching and pedagogy, power and urban education, language issues, cultural issues of urban schools as seen in the media, research in city schools, aesthetics and the proximity of cultural institutions, and education policy. Sixty one essays written by specialists in teacher education; public policy; sociology; psychology; applied linguistics; forestry; urban studies; school administration; cultural studies; evaluation; and linguistics, provide a blueprint for scholars, teachers, parents, urban politicians, school administrators, policy professionals, and others seeking to understand the situation of urban schools across America today.

Many factors complicate the education of urban students. Among them have been issues related to population density; racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity; poverty; racism (individual and institutional); and funding levels. Although urban educators have been addressing these issues for decades, placing them under the umbrella of "urban education" and treating them as a specific area of practice and inquiry is relatively recent. Despite the wide adoption of the term a consensus about its meaning exists at only the broadest of levels. In short, urban education remains an ill-defined concept. This comprehensive volume addresses this definitional challenge and provides a 3-part conceptual model in which the achievement of equity for all -- regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity – is an ideal that is central to urban education. The model also posits that effective urban education requires attention to the three central issues that confronts all education systems (a) accountability of individuals and the institutions in which they work, (b) leadership, which occurs in multiple ways and at multiple levels, and (c) learning, which is the raison d'être of education. Just as a three-legged stool would fall if any one leg were weak or missing, each of these areas is essential to effective urban education and affects the others.

This volume brings together leading scholars in urban education to focus on inner city matters, specifically as they relate to educational research, theory, policy, and practice. Each chapter provides perspectives on the history and evolving nature of urban education, the current education landscape, and helps chart an all-important direction for future work and needs. The Handbook addresses seven areas that capture the breadth and depth of available knowledge in urban education: (1) Psychology, Health and Human Development, (2) Sociological Perspectives, (3) Families and Communities, (4) Teacher Education and Special Education, (5) Leadership, Administration and Leaders, (6) Curriculum & Instruction, and (7) Policy and Reform.

Although STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has been diversely defined by various researchers (e.g. Buck Institute, 2003; Capraro & Slough, 2009; Scott, 2009; Wolf, 2008), during the last decade, STEM education has gained an increasing presence on the national agenda through initiatives from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES). The rate of technological innovation and change has been tremendous over the past ten years, and this rapid increase will only continue. STEM literacy is the power to “identify, apply, and integrate concepts from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to understand complex problems and to innovate to solve them” (Washington State STEM, 2011, Internet). In order for U.S. students to be on the forefront of this revolution, ALL of our schools need to be part of the STEM vision and guide students in acquiring STEM literacy. Understanding and addressing the challenge of achieving STEM literacy for ALL students begins with an understanding of its element and the connections between them. In order to remain competitive, the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy has recommended that the US optimize “its knowledge-based resources, particularly in science and technology” (National Academies, 2007, p. 4). Optimizing knowledge-based resources needs to be the goal but is also a challenge for ALL educators (Scheurich & Huggins, 2009). Regardless, there is little disagreement that contemporary society is increasingly dependent on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and thus comprehensive understandings are essential for those pursuing STEM careers. It is also generally agreed that PK-12 students do not do well in STEM areas, both in terms of national standards and in terms of international comparisons (Kuenzi, Matthews, & Mangan, 2006; Capraro, Capraro, Yetkiner, Corlu, Ozel, Ye, & Kim, 2011). The question then becomes what might PK-12 schools do to improve teachers’ and students’ STEM knowledge and skills? This book will look at equity and access issues in STEM education from PK-12, university, and administrative and policy lenses.

This book profiles local and national efforts to transform urban education and reinvent urban teacher preparation. It describes real programs in real urban schools that have developed policy initiatives that promote educational equity, community-based curricula, and teacher education and parent empowerment programs that emphasize democratic collaboration among universities, urban teachers, parents, and community members. By involving all stakeholders, this comprehensive approach provides a model for creating urban schools that not only excite and inspire, but also serve as engines for social change. Contending that urban education reform will fail without public engagement and a commitment to social justice, the contributors challenge urban educators to become accountable to their students and the communities they serve.