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Prior to Brown v. Board of Education 1954, Black female educators played a significant and vital role in segregated schools. Despite Black female teachers’ historic presence in the field of education, presently Black female teachers are disproportionately under-represented in the US teacher workforce. Acknowledging the shortage of Black female teachers in K-12 classrooms, the purpose of this qualitative study is to explore why Black female educators teach in under-resourced, urban schools. By examining Black female educators’ initial draw to urban schools in what we conceptualized as the urban factor, we hope to reframe the implicit biases surrounding under-resourced, urban schools as less desirable workplaces and unearth reasons why those Black female teachers who enter teaching gravitate more toward urban schools. Three themes emerged about Black female teachers’ thoughts on and preference for urban schools with an unexpected finding about Black female teachers’ perceptions of student behavior. Concluding, recommendations are offered for policy and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the extant scholarship on quality in early childhood education and to emphasize the importance of extending the literature to explore the potential influence that a teachers’ educational background may have on kindergarten readiness for African American children in urban early learning settings.

Research has identified high-quality early education as a significant contributor to the academic success and development of young children. This paper examines current conceptualizations and trends in early childhood education related to the needs of African American children.

Our assessment indicates that the early learning of African American children in urban settings warrants further consideration by educational stakeholders. Specifically, the process and structural quality of urban early learning environments requires more culturally responsive approaches to policy and practice.

Improving the early learning opportunities of African American students in urban settings has practical and social implications that substantiate the value of the process and structural quality assessments. Recommendations for policy and practice are centered on a growth-based model of opportunities. Policy recommendations include creating urban teacher credentials and sustaining urban education, while practical recommendations include creating opportunities for vicarious experiences, affirming interactions and engaging in multicultural discourse.

In this chapter, we discuss teaching physical education to Black male students in urban schools. We present a brief account of the history and status of physical education and specifically examine school physical education, particularly for Black male students in urban geographical contexts. We also offer strategies to counter the narrative of Black male school failure and present strategies for addressing the needs of urban teachers and Black male students.

This paper aims to examine the cultivation of anti-racist practices with pre- and in-service teachers in post-secondary contexts, and the tensions of engaging in this work for equity and justice in urban teacher education.

The paper relies on critical race theory (CRT) and critical whiteness studies (CWS), as well as auto-ethnographic and storytelling methods to examine how black in-service teachers working with a black teacher educator and white pre-service teachers working with a white teacher educator enacted strategies for cultivating anti-racist practices.

Findings indicate that for black and white educators alike, developing critical consciousness and anti-racist pedagogical practices requires naming racism as the central construct of oppression. Moreover, teachers and teacher educators demonstrated the importance of explicitly naming racism and centralizing (rather than de-centralizing) the political project of anti-racism within the current socio-political climate.

In addition to racism, educators’ racialized identities must be centralized to support individual anti-racist pedagogical practices. Storying racism provides a context for this individualized work and provides a framework for disrupting master narratives embedded in educational institutions.

Much has been written about the importance of teachers connecting to students’ out-of-school lives to increase academic achievement and advance educational justice. Strategies for forging those connections include using assets-based practices and linking school curricula to students’ community and cultural identities. While these connections are important, this paper focuses on teachers’ explicit anti-racist practices in urban education.

teachHOUSTON is a university-based secondary STEM teacher preparation program that addresses the critical need for highly qualified STEM teachers in Texas and across the country. STEM teachers are prepared through early and ongoing field-based teaching experiences and rigorous research-based instruction that integrates content and pedagogy provided by faculty members who have extensive teaching experience in public schools. teachHOUSTON serves the fourth largest city in the United States, along with its satellite communities and has many noteworthy features which are mapped in this chapter. Particular attention is paid to inquiry-based learning, student-centered instruction, and culturally responsive pedagogy as well as the improvements in the program based on the collaboration between physics and teachHOUSTON faculty.

Urban schools serve a diverse student population that includes African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and “poor” European Americans. The school size and location and the composition of student population play a major part in determining learning outcomes of a particular school (Mukuria, 2002). The Carnegie Report (1988) described many urban schools as having a large, diverse population and located in “poor” neighborhoods. The report indicated that many schools lack purpose, coherence, and unifying culture and that they have neglected buildings that give them a negative appearance. In addition, these schools lack meaningful instructional programs and regular routines as well as a strong sense of community. As a result, they demonstrate the instability to establish a consensus on a unifying culture, which to a large extent, leads to disciplinary problems.

By reviewing the related literature on the Jiaoshi Pinren Zhi (JPZ) system, this paper seeks to indicate that the implementation of JPZ not only has led to domestic brain drain and the imbalance of teachers' qualities between different areas and schools, but also has violated children's equal rights to education guaranteed by the Constitution and educational laws in PR China.

By analysing national policies and laws and some cases, the paper points out that the reforms on teachers' employment causes the imbalance of teachers' qualities between different areas and schools and it is against the principle of children's equal rights to education guaranteed by the Constitution and some educational laws in China.

Since the late 1980s, many reform initiatives have been launched in the context of the transition from planned economy to market economy in China.

The reforms on the teachers' employment system from “Tongyi Fenpei” (TF, a system of unified placement for all graduates) and the life‐time employment system to JPZ (a free contract employment system) is one of the important reform initiatives.

Beliefs about teaching influence practice and can play a powerful role in the day-to-day decision-making of teachers. Pre-service teachers commonly accrue their original set of beliefs on teaching from teacher preparation programs or personal experiences, but unlike teachers with more experience, new teachers are more susceptible to changing their beliefs on teaching once they become official teachers of record. If these beliefs change in a negative way, such as by adopting a set of beliefs that views students through a deficit lens, or capable of achieving less than their privileged counterparts, then schools will continue to foster tendencies for social reproduction instead of tendencies for social justice. In urban schools, this increase in negative perceptions of students is even more common as new teachers face challenges that are less likely to occur in non-urban schools. Findings suggest that new teachers do change their beliefs during their first year, and that these beliefs often reflect the beliefs of trusted and close colleagues within their social networks. While some teachers experienced positive changes in their beliefs and teaching practices, other teachers experienced negative changes in their beliefs that unfavorably affected students. Most teachers were unaware of their belief changes, but offered explanations for how and why their beliefs could have changed without their noticing over the course of the study. Implications and possible directions for future research are discussed.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine the impact of Mexico’s national teacher incentive program, Carrera Magisterial (CM), on educational quality and equity.Methodology – I conduct a descriptive analysis of data from two Mexican states, Aguascalientes and Sonora, to explore whether the distribution of teachers across schools and communities has changed since the implementation of CM.Findings – Although more qualified teachers tend to be disproportionately concentrated in wealthier municipalities and urban areas in both Aguascalientes and Sonora, I find some evidence that the distribution of qualified teachers has become more equitable over time in both states.Research limitations – These results suggest that CM’s design, which allows teachers to advance more rapidly through the system if they teach in low-development zones, may have increased equity in children’s access to qualified teachers. However, these trends could result from influences beyond CM, such as salary incentives to teach in less developed areas. We must also take care in extrapolating results from two Mexican states to other states with different populations and geographies.Practical implications – This research suggests that policymakers must apply a careful analysis to the design of CM, especially the allocation of points to teachers based on their students’ test scores. In particular, educators and policymakers must consider the potential movement of more qualified teachers to higher-scoring schools and classrooms.Value – Although substantial research has examined whether CM has improved educational quality in Mexico, this is one of few studies to explore the program’s impact on educational equity.

In her children's book, Stone Soup, Heather Forest (1998) recreates a popular European folktale about people wanting to make soup but lacking the typical ingredients…. As the story unfolds, they discover the possibilities that are available when individuals come together to make soup out of a stone and with the contribution of each member – a carrot, a potato – and “a magical ingredient…sharing.” Within this chapter, we tell our story of seeking national accreditation for the Urban Teacher Education Program (UTEP) at Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N)…. This story is crafted through personal experience narratives that illuminate the contribution of each author toward making our UTEP soup…. As in the story of Stone Soup…, we lack the typical ingredients to achieve accreditation, and we continue to make it happen.