Complementary and Competing Beliefs About Urban Teacher Education: Teacher Educator and Teacher Candidate Perspectives on Equity-Oriented Teaching

• In Event: 64.084 - Teaching and Teacher Education in Urban Communities

Abstract

Equity-oriented teacher education has long been the focus of urban teacher education programs (TEPs). However, urban TEPs sometimes struggle to achieve an equity-oriented agenda, in part because of the competing beliefs/goals of stakeholders, as they may not uniformly prioritize the same factors as fundamental to successful teaching. This qualitative study highlights the beliefs about urban teaching of both Teacher Educators’ (TEs) and Teacher Candidates’ (TCs) from one urban elementary TEP. Although stakeholders across the program generally agreed on the importance of social justice and asset orientations, as well as a focus on students’ lives, for successful urban teaching, there were multiple tensions amongst and between TCs and TEs about how and why we engage in such work.

Authors

• Arthi B. Rao, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Becca Woodard, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Gregory V. Larnell, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Marisha Humphries, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Federico R. Waitoller, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Andrea Vaughan, University of Illinois at Chicago