WINNER 2017 O.L. Davis, Jr. AATC Outstanding Book in Education Award WINNER 2017 American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Award Through rich ethnographic detail, Urban Educational Identity captures the complexities of urban education by documenting the everyday practices of teaching and learning at a high-achieving, high-poverty school. Drawing on over two years of intensive fieldwork and analysis, author Sara M. Childers shows how students, teachers, and parents work both within and against traditional deficit discourses to demonstrate the challenges and paradoxes of urban schooling. It offers an up-close description of how macro-government policies are interpreted, applied, and even subverted for better or worse by students as active agents in their own education. The book moves on to develop and analyze the concept of "urban cachet," tracing how conceptions of race and class were deeply entwined with the very practices for success that propelled students towards graduation and college entrance. A poignant, insightful, and practical analysis, Urban Educational Identity is a timely exploration of how race and class continue to matter in schools.
In urban education, “urban” is a floating signifier that is imbued with meaning, positive or negative by its users. “Urban” can be used to refer to both the geographical context of a city and a sense of “less than,” most often in relation to race and/or socioeconomic status (Watson, 2011). For Noblit and Pink (2007), “Urban, rather, is a generalization as much about geography as it is about the idea that urban centers have problems: problems of too many people, too much poverty, too much crime and violence, and ultimately, too little hope” (p. xv). Recently, urban education scholars such as Anyon (2005), Pink and Noblit (2007), Blanchett, Klinger and Harry (2009), and Lipman (2013) have elucidated the social construction of oppression and privilege for urban students, teachers, schools, families, and communities using intersectionality theories. Building on their work, we see the need for an edited collection that would look across the different realms of urban education—theorizing identity markers in urban education, education in urban schools and communities, thinking intersectionally in teacher education & higher education, educational policies & urban spaces—seeking to better understand each topic using an intersectional lens. Such a collection might serve to conceptually frame or provide methodological tools, or act as a reference point for scholars and educators who are trying to address urban educational issues in light of identities and power. Secondly, we argue that education questions and/or problems beg to be conceptualized and analyzed through more than one identity axis. Policies and practices that do not take into account urban students’ intertwining identity markers risk reproducing patterns of privilege and oppression, perpetuating stereotypes, and failing at the task we care most deeply about: supporting all students’ learning across a holistic range of academic, personal, and justice-oriented outcomes. Can educational policies and practices address the social justice issues faced in urban schools and communities today? We argue that doing intersectional research and implementing educational policies and practices guided by these frameworks can help improve the “fit.” Particular attention needs to be paid to intersectionality as a lens for educational theory, policy, and practice. As urban educators we would be wise to consider the intertwining of these identity axes in order to better analyze educational issues and engage in teaching, learning, research, and policymaking that are better-tuned to the needs of diverse students, families, and communities.
This book examines experiences and implications of 'against-the-grain' school choices, where white middle class families choose ordinary and 'low performing' secondary schools for their children. It offers a unique view of identity formation, taking in matters like family history, locality and whiteness.
This book provides classroom examples to demonstrate how identity-making is integral to the teaching and learning process. Responding to school reform efforts that focus on top-down reform measures, this book proposes “identity work” as an alternative approach. The author argues that efforts to improve urban schools should recognize the importance of relational change that focuses on deepening personal interactions between students and teachers, teachers and other teachers, and schools and parents. Based on an in-depth study of two classrooms in urban K–8 schools, the book illuminates the importance of allowing teachers the freedom to make pedagogical adjustments based on their knowledge of students’ needs, backgrounds, and interests. This volume reframes our understanding of urban schools and raises questions about the goals of local and federal reform and what is at stake for educational systems. Book Features: Provides examples of identity work and its potential for creating individual, institutional, and large scale systemic improvement. Identifies how skilled educators make pedagogical decisions that increase student engagement and learning outcomes. Examines the challenges of working within a context of increasing mandates and rigid accountability structures. Advocates for design improvement strategies that rely on the capacities of students, teachers, and community members. Shows how qualitative work that elucidates the experience of students and teachers can inform education policy. “Identity Work in the Classroom is an extraordinary and compelling book. It is essential reading for teacher-educators, teachers, and community organizers, and it represents the best of contemporary critical school ethnography.” —From the Foreword by Theresa Perry, Professor of Africana Studies and Education, Simmons College “Grounded in an urban ecological lens of learning, becoming, and knowing, this book demonstrates how educators navigate and negotiate educational policy and reform through discourse and identity construction. Identity Work in the Classroom represents a powerful exemplar of the kind of discursive practices essential to advance urban education scholarship and actions during challenging and changing times. If you are concerned about policies that shape urban education and the children they impact, read this book.” —H. Richard Milner IV, Helen Faison Professor of Urban Education, University of Pittsburgh “Identity Work in the Classroom is an indispensable intervention into the research literature on culture, identity, and learning. Using rigorous methodology and sophisticated theoretical frameworks, Jones-Walker spotlights the dynamic interplay between identity work and educational processes. This book offers concrete examples of the ways that schools serve as complex yet fecund sites of identity work, as well as how our teaching and learning processes can be informed by careful and reflective consideration of identity. It is essential reading for teachers, educational leaders, and policymakers alike.” —Marc Lamont Hill, Distinguished Professor of African American Studies, Morehouse College
This book provides an invaluable resource for researchers who wish to improve education by bridging students, school, family, and community resources. Based in connecting experiences in and out of school, it suggests a strategy to put students' practices, cultures, and identities in the center of a twenty-first-century education.
This practitioner-focused guide to creating identity-safe classrooms presents four categories of core instructional practices: Child-centered teaching ; Classroom relationships ; Caring environments ; Cultivating diversity. The book presents a set of strategies that can be implemented immediately by teachers. It includes a wealth of vignettes taken from identity-safe classrooms as well as reflective exercises that can be completed by individual teachers or teacher teams.
This second edition of the Handbook of Urban Education offers a fresh, fluid, and diverse range of perspectives from which the authors describe, analyze, and offer recommendations for urban education in the US. Each of the seven sections includes an introduction, providing an overview and contextualization of the contents. In addition, there are discussion questions at the conclusion of many of the 31 chapters. The seven sections in this edition of the Handbook include: (1) Multidisciplinary Perspectives (e.g., economics, health sciences, sociology, and human development); (2) Policy and Leadership; (3) Teacher Education and Teaching; (4) Curriculum, Language, and Literacy; (5) STEM; (6) Parents, Families, and Communities; and (7) School Closures, Gentrification, and Youth Voice and Innovations. Chapters are written by leaders in the field of urban education, and there are 27 new authors in this edition of the Handbook. The book covers a wide and deep range of the landscape of urban education. It is a powerful and accessible introduction to the field of urban education for researchers, theorists, policymakers and practitioners as well as a critical call for the future of the field for those more seasoned in the field.
The 21st century and its many challenges (invasion of digital technology, climate change, health crises, political crises, etc.) alert us that we need new educational responses, led by new education professionals. Research has shown that for these professionals to change in a substantial and profound way, they must change their identity, that is, the way in which they give meaning and meaning to their professional work. This book exposes, based on one of the most current and advanced theories for analyzing identity change -the theory of the dialogical self-, what changes should take place and how to promote them in eleven fundamental professional profiles in current education (teachers of student-teachers, primary & secondary teachers, inclusive teachers, inquiring teachers, mentors, school principals, university teachers, academic advisors, technologic/hybrid teachers, Learning specialists & educational researchers).
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Social and Environmental Psychology in the European Context, Lisbon, Portugal, September 22-26, 1986
