This book critically explores pedagogical activities, policies, and coursework that teacher education programs can provide to more fully prepare teacher candidates and in-service educators for professional practice in urban schools. It illustrates how teacher educators from across the United States are supporting teacher candidates and in-service teachers to possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for equity-oriented instructional practices and advocacy for professional engagement in the urban context. Chapters share insider perspectives of urban teacher education on preparing teachers to teach in culturally, linguistically, and socio-economically diverse classrooms. They discuss teacher educators’ learning about their own practice in the preparation of teachers for city schools, preparing teacher candidates from rural and suburban contexts to teach in urban settings, and supervising practicing teachers in city classrooms. The volume also focuses on the interplay of cultural and linguistic parity between teacher educators and their preservice/in-service teacher students, implementing learning activities or coursework about teaching in urban schools, and enacting critical pedagogical practices. This book will be beneficial to teacher educators focused on teacher preparation for city classrooms and urban school districts, and researchers seeking to adopt self-study methodology in their own research endeavors.

The purpose of this book is to highlight the work of teacher educators in the field of rural education. In this book, education faculty who work in teacher education study the ways in which one’s identity impacts one’s teaching and the partnerships with rural schools. Although the field of research on teacher preparation has an abundance of studies on preparing students for the challenges of urban settings, there is much less emphasis on rural education, despite the prevalence of rural schools. This book problematises notions of rural or rurality which is often considered via a deficit or a generalised model where a stereotype of one kind of rural is outlined. Developing more multi-faceted understandings of rurality is a key to attracting and retaining teachers who understand the complexities and opportunities of living and working in rural spaces.

This book weaves together voices of faculty, residents, mentors, administrators, community organizers, and students who have lived together in a third space urban teacher residency program in Newark as they reinvent math and science teaching and teacher education through the lens of inquiry. Each chapter includes narratives from multiple perspectives as well as tools we have used within the program to support and build change, providing readers with both real cases of how an urban teacher residency can impact school systems, and concrete tools and examples to help the reader understand and replicate aspects of the process. Capturing both the successes but also the tensions and challenges, we offer a kaleidoscopic view of the rich, complex, and multi-layered ways in which multiple stakeholders work together to make enduring educational change in urban schools. Our third space NMUTR has been a fragile utopian enterprise, one that has relied on a shared commitment of all involved, and a deep sense of hope that working collaboratively has the potential, even if not perfect, to make a difference.

Winner of the 2013 American Educational Studies Association's Critics Choice Award! When teacher education is located on a university campus, set apart from urban schools and communities, it is easy to overlook the realities and challenges communities face as they struggle toward social, economic, cultural, and racial justice. This book describes how teacher education can become a meaningful part of this work, by re-positioning programs directly into urban schools and communities. Situating their work within the theoretical framework of prioritizing community strengths, each set of authors provides a detailed and nuanced description of a teacher education program re-positioned within an urban school or community. Authors describe the process of developing such a relationship, how the university, school, and community became integrated partners in the program, and the impact on participants. As university-based teacher education has come under increased scrutiny for lack of "real world" relevance, this book showcases programs that have successfully navigated the travails of shifting their base directly into urban schools and communities, with evidence of positive outcomes for all involved.

This book about the transition from teacher preparation to teaching practice in urban school settings offers rare insight into how teachers can transform their own practice and in the process, transform the culture of schools.

This book attempts to present both theoretical and practical perspectives on school and university partnerships that focus on the preparation and retention of urban teachers. In particular, the book focuses on (a) theoretical and historical underpinnings of partnering to prepare urban teachers as social activists; (b) stories from the field, explored through the voices and actions of students, families, teacher educators, and preservice and in-service teachers; and (c) a critical analysis of this work. The research presented is situated in urban settings that mirror those across the United States and represents partnerships in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Wilmington, where school, city, and teacher education communities collaborate to prepare and keep teachers in hard-to-staff, high-needs schools. Case studies included in the text explore multiple perspectives on partnering to prepare urban teachers - including those of urban schoolchildren and their teachers, teacher educators and teachers becoming teacher educators, and parents. Combined, the chapters theoretically and practically detail the layers and conundrums, tribulations and triumphs, contexts and voices of the challenges facing urban teachers, teacher educators, community members, and administrators who work collaboratively to prepare and support teachers as social activists.

This book explores the concept of the "best-loved self" in teaching and teacher education, asserting that the best-loved self is foundational to the development of teacher identity, growth in context, and learning in community. Drawing on the work of Joseph Schwab, who was the first to name the "best-loved self," the editors and their contributors extend this knowledge further through the collaboration of their group of teacher educators, known as the Faculty Academy, who have been involved in examining teacher education for over two decades.