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46(5) 953 –974

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DOI: 10.1177/0042085911400320http://uex.sagepub.com

A New Era in the

Preparation of

Teachers for Urban

Schools: Linking

Multiculturalism,

Disciplinary-Based

Content, and Pedagogy

Barbara L. Bales1

and Felicia Saffold1

AbstractDisconnects between the demographics of teacher candidates and thestudents attending today’s public urban schools are well documented. At thesame time, research points to the educational value of linking students’ livedexperiences to their classroom learning. This article presents the research-based findings of faculty who implemented a field-based “pedagogy lab” inan urban-focused, collaborative teacher education program. The lab offeredteacher candidates deliberate opportunities to interrogate their ethnicity,

gender, and social class then use that knowledge to enhance variousdisciplinary-based instructional activities for PK-12 pupils. The findings suggestnew ways of preparing teachers for the children attending urban schools.

Keywords

culturally relevant pedagogy, preservice teachers, teacher education, urbaneducation

1University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Barbara L. Bales, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 383 Enderis Hall, 2400 E. Hartford

Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA

Email: [email protected]


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954 Urban Education 46(5)

As teacher educators at Great Lakes University (GLU),1 our mission’s core

guiding principle forefronts our commitment that educators licensed through

our certification programs “will demonstrate an understanding of the uniquecharacteristics of diverse urban contexts, and issues of race, class, culture and

language are kept at the forefront of equity considerations.” Our partnership

with the Great Lakes Public Schools (GLPS) is designed to uphold that mis-

sion. However, in the past year, GLPS was declared a District Identified for

Improvement (DIFI). This sanction came because students failed to make

adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward meeting the state’s academic learn-

ing standards (Great Lakes State Department of Public Instruction, 2008).2

This obvious gap between our mission and the expected outcomes of our

own practice forced us to ask, How might we better infuse a teacher candi-

date’s experiences with the unique context of urban schools so pupils have

access to culturally responsive teaching in mathematics, science, English and

history?

This article offers the findings from a Teachers for a New Era (TNE)

research project3 that offered students of teaching deliberate opportunities to

interrogate their ethnicity, gender, and social class then use that knowledge

to explore how they could enhance various disciplinary-based instructional

activities. We begin by providing a background for the study and review themultiple knowledge bases of learning to teach. The second section offers the

theoretical underpinnings of the pedagogy lab. Next, we share the study’s

research design. Within that section we share how we generated and ana-

lyzed data associated with the lab and its participants. Following that, we

present responses to the research question—How might we better infuse a

teacher candidate’s experiences with the unique context of urban schools so

students have access to culturally responsive teaching in mathematics, sci-

ence, English, and history? We conclude this article by sharing the study’simplications for institutions preparing teachers for urban schools.

Background of the Study

Banks et al. (2001) suggests, “If teachers are to increase learning opportunities

for all students, they must become knowledgeable about the cultural back-

grounds of their students” (p. 6). Research indicates that same knowledge

should inform teachers’ pedagogical and curricular decisions in the classroomso disciplinary-based content knowledge is accessible to every student (Gay,

2000; Grant & Gillette, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Moll & Gonzalez, 2004;

Quartz & TEP Research Group, 2003; Sleeter, 2005; Tharp, Estrada, Dalton,

& Yamauchi, 2000). Yet teacher-preparing institutions have struggled with


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Bales and Saffold 955

instantiating these outcomes in their certification programs. As Zeichner

(2003), drawing on the works of others, observed, “The typical response of

teacher education programs . . . has been to add a course or two on multicul-tural, bilingual/ESL, or urban education to the curriculum and leave the rest of

the curriculum largely intact” (p. 493).

At GLU, we believed our mission as an urban research university exempted

us from such criticism. We knew our programs needed to acknowledge that

“barriers to [teacher] candidates’ increased knowledge growth about cultural

differences and ways of providing appropriate and responsive pedagogy to

students from cultures other than their own included positivistic thinking,

dualistic thinking, a belief in one right answer, and relying on personal biog-

raphies as guides to how to teach others” (Hollins & Guzman, 2005, p. 512).

At GLU, we responded to that understanding by requiring all education-

intended students complete a 3-credit, field-based course—Introduction to

Teaching—before they are admitted to the School of Education (SOE). In that

course, students explore teaching and learning while participating in 50 hr of

field experience in GLPS classrooms. Throughout the course, students are

given multiple opportunities to reflect on their identity as prospective teachers

and the complex work of teaching in the city’s schools. We assumed the cur-

ricular and pedagogical arrangement of this course, prior to admission, sup- ported our mission, and grounded their preservice preparation.

But students’ SOE admissions essays, regardless of the certification pro-

gram they were applying to, failed to reveal (a) any awareness of the social

and political structures that bear down on children attending city schools;

(b) any interrogation of their privilege within those structures; or (c) any

insights on how their roles as teachers might (re)shape children’s opportuni-

ties to learn. More often than not, they were willing to “accept the status

quo, as ‘that’s just the way things are’ . . . [and believed] that children and parents just needed to ‘try harder’ to work their way out of poverty and

intergenerational failure” (Leland & Harste, 2005, p. 62). These essays

forced us to (re)examine the learning-to-teach professional sequence4 we

provide students and identify gaps in their opportunities to learn about, and

push on, the structures that limit children’s learning. In doing this, however,

we exposed the institutional structures that create isolated islands of knowl-

edge in the sequence.

As Figure 1 illustrates, students of teaching, acquire discipline-specificcontent knowledge and a foundation about the histories and cultures of

diverse groups during their liberal arts preparation in the College of Letters

and Sciences (L&S). Then they focus on attaining pedagogical and peda-

gogical content knowledge (PCK) expertise through their SOE coursework




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and initial clinical experiences. Their preservice preparation concludes with

a full-time student teaching experience. But the institution’s historical,cultural, and structural differences across the campus complicate, if not

impede, the integration of these knowledge bases. By default, students of

teaching are left to bridge three disparate learning arenas without contigu-

ous faculty support.

For teacher education programs that partner with urban school districts

like GLU, the gaps in this arrangement are exacerbated by three program-

matic and pedagogical issues. First is the need to clarify the characteristics of

a quality urban field experience (Foote & Cook-Cottone, 2004). Second isthe issue of how to structure programs so prospective teachers have earlier

and more frequent experiences in these settings (McKinney, Haberman,

Stafford-Johnson, & Robinson, 2008). The third issue is how to provide ped-

agogically sound opportunities for teacher candidates to meld their campus

and off-campus learning experiences. Given this myriad of issues, how could

we expect students of teaching to learn how to “draw on students’ cultural

knowledge to support learning . . . [and] think critically about how that

knowledge maps onto the demands of the academic domain?” (Grossman,Schoenfeld, & Lee, 2005, p. 220).

The confluence of these learning disjunctures, our mission as an urban

research university, and our status as a TNE site5 forced us to revisit fundamental

assumptions about the way we were preparing teachers for the children attending

GLPS. We started with the challenge from Murrell (2000), who reminded us

School

Of

Education

Pedagogical,

Pedagogical

Content

Knowledge

Expertise andInitial

Clinical

Experiences

Great Lakes

Public

Schools

Full Time

Student

Teaching

inUrban

Classrooms

Teacher Candidate Learning at GLU

College

Of

Letters and

Science

Discipline-

specific Content

Knowledge andthe Histories

and Cultures of

Diverse Groups

Figure 1. Disparate arenas in the learning-to-teach professional sequence at GLU




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To meet the needs of an increasingly culturally and linguistically

diverse school population in America will require collaboration among

schools of education, arts and sciences faculty in higher education,community stakeholders, parents and school personnel to prepare mul-

ticulturally competent teachers. (p. 339)

Then we asked, what if students interrogated their ethnicity, gender, and

social class then used their new ways of knowing to explore how culturally

relevant and responsive pedagogy could be used in the teaching and learning

of mathematics, science, English, and history? Next, we acknowledged our

TNE obligation to bring together those entities across the campus that share

responsibility in the preparation of teachers. What emerged from the conver-

sations between SOE and L&S faculty was a 1-credit “pedagogy lab” tied to

students’ Introduction to Teaching coursework and field experiences. In this

laboratory-like setting, students would have opportunities to make earlier

and deeper connections within the multifaceted knowledge base of learning

to teach.

The Multifaceted Knowledge Base of Learning to TeachLike most city-based teacher preparation programs, many students attend-

ing GLU are not familiar with the unique assets children in the city bring to

the classroom nor have they experienced the structural inequities around

race, class, culture, abilities, and language that permeate urban schools.

With that in mind, we designed the lab so students had the opportunity and

support to grapple with the complexities of their own learning to teach histo-

ries. We did this by designing a curriculum that asked them to interrogate the

relationships between and among the way they were taught, how they learn,and how they envisioned their classroom practice in an urban school. The

curriculum we crafted drew together multiculturalism content, disciplinary-

based content knowledge, and candidates’ field experiences.

Multiculturalism Content as a Learning to Teach Knowledge Base

Teacher candidates, as a collective, are “homogeneous populations, the large

majority of whom are White and middle-class, woman, from suburban orrural backgrounds . . . [and] enter preparation programs with negative or defi-

cit attitudes and beliefs about those different from themselves” (Hollins &

Guzman, 2005, p. 511; as well as Gay, 2000; Haberman & Post, 1998; Irvine,

2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Sleeter, 2001). Although most states require

candidates engage in some form of multicultural education coursework prior




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to licensure, the critical attributes of that knowledge base are not specified

(Akiba, Cockrell, Simmons, & Han, 2007). Furthermore, most state’s INTASC-

based Teacher Standards conflate the tenets of multiculturalism with otherdiversity frameworks. National accreditation agencies like the National Coun-

cil for Accreditation of Teacher Education (National Council for Accreditation

of Teacher Education, 2006) and Teacher Education Accreditation Council

(Teacher Education Accreditation Council, 2006) offer some guidance (viz.,

NCATE Standard No. 4: Diversity and TEAC Quality Principle I: Evidence

of Student Learning—Multicultural Perspectives and Accuracy), but each

group’s focus on instruction fails to take into account the complex ways a

candidate’s own ideological beliefs about teaching, learning, and knowledge

gird their pedagogical choices.

Research in the field of multicultural education, however, offers distinct

direction for programs pursuing this important work. Banks et al. (2001), for

example, suggests that teacher preparation programs should offer experiences

that help students of teaching:

1. Uncover and identify their personal attitudes toward racial, ethnic,

language, and cultural groups;

2. Acquire knowledge about the histories and cultures of the diverseracial, ethnic, cultural, and language groups within the nation and

within their schools;

3. Become acquainted with the diverse perspectives that exist within

different ethnic and cultural communities; and

4. Understand the ways in which institutionalized knowledge within

schools, universities, and popular culture can perpetuate stereotypes

about racial and ethnic groups. (p. 6)

For teacher-preparing universities that partner with large, city school

districts, candidates should also have a “working understanding of the sys-

temic structural inequality extant in urban environments” (Murrell, 2006, p. 83).

To those five outcomes, we drew on the students’ 50 hours of required

field experience in a local elementary classroom and, with probing ques-

tions, pushed them to investigate those dynamics of teaching that are

unique to urban schools. For example, we asked how the multiple and often

conflicting purposes of schooling affect what teachers do and what studentslearn and what characterizes urban schools? We also asked students to prob-

lematize their classroom observations and interviews with teachers and stu-

dents. More specifically, we challenged them to examine their assumptions

about urban schools, students, teachers, and communities.




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These activities not only revealed gaps in what we wanted students to learn

but also discrepancies in our perceptions about how they were being pre-

pared. To ameliorate these disjunctures in the learning-to-teach professionalsequence, we brought L&S and SOE faculty together so students of teaching

had opportunities to use the knowledge base of multicultural education to con-

struct pedagogically sound lessons for children in the city’s schools.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge as

a Learning to Teach Knowledge Base

Shulman (1987) suggested that the knowledge base of teaching “lies at the

intersection of content and pedagogy, in the capacity of a teacher to transform

the content knowledge he or she possesses into forms that are pedagogically

powerful and yet adaptive to the variations in ability and background pre-

sented by the students” (p. 15). But teacher candidates use their own learning

histories to filter what they learn about the knowledge base of teaching. Such

filters include their own understandings about the purposes for teaching a

subject matter, what he or she knows or does not know about a student’s

knowledge and misconceptions of the discipline, their own conception of cur-

riculum, and the associated instruction they deem important to shape students’learning of a particular discipline (Grossman, 1990). The complex nature of

PCK suggests that teacher-preparing faculty across the institution should pro-

vide a laboratory setting where candidates can critically examine how their

own disciplinary-based learning shapes the fusing of content and pedagogy

that they then offer children in classrooms. It also suggests that faculty, across

the institution, should provide candidates access to PK-12 students; a feat, in

and of itself, that requires most disciplinary-based courses to breach the

familiar boundaries of their campuses.

Disciplinary-Based Content Knowledge

as a Learning to Teach Knowledge Base

The importance of a teacher’s disciplinary-based content knowledge is

acknowledged in most states’ teacher education program approval policies

(U.S. Department of Education, 2006) and requires a formal relationship

between L&S and SOE faculty. The theory of action in these policies assumesstudents of teaching will develop the deep disciplinary-based content knowl-

edge that translates into more effective, instructional decision making, which,

in turn, improves student achievement levels. But as Floden & Meniketti

(2006) point out, the demand for this cross-campus relationship has “strong




9/23


intuitive appeal, but exactly what [students of teaching] need to know to

teach at various levels, with what desired outcomes, are still topics for debate.

Authors may agree on the general principle that some subject matter knowl-edge is important, yet disagree about the specifics” (p. 283). We contend the

specifics of how to meld disciplinary-based content knowledge, PCK, and

multicultural content knowledge can be learned in the pedagogy lab.

Pedagogy Labs as Sites for a Confluence of Learning Theories

The first purpose of the pedagogy lab was to fundamentally alter teacher

candidates’ socialized beliefs about children of color. This would open space

for them to combine what they were learning about the histories and cultures

of diverse groups in their L&S courses with their subject-specific content

courses, they meld it with what they were learning about culturally relevant

pedagogy in Introduction to Teaching. The combining of these knowledge

bases provided candidates with the needed foundation from which to recon-

ceptualize disciplinary-based, instructional activities. The uprooting of their

own learning histories required that we use the theory of conceptual change

to support their new learning in the lab.

Conceptual Change Learning Theory in the Pedagogy Lab

Conceptual change learning theory puts forward the idea that people hold to

their beliefs and understandings until they recognize discrepancies with new

ideas then reconcile the resulting dissonance. Teaching for conceptual change

also requires a social environment that promotes this interrogation so new

understandings have a higher status than previously held beliefs. Learning,

then, results from “an interaction between new and existing conceptions withthe outcome being dependent on the nature of the interaction” (Hewson, Beeth,

& Thorley, 1998, p. 251). This meant the pedagogy lab needed to provide

education-intended students opportunities to

1. consider why new practices and their associated values and beliefs

are better than more conventional approaches;

2. see examples of these practices, preferably under realistic conditions;

3. experience such practices firsthand as learners; and4. incorporate new ideas with ongoing support and guidance (Feiman-

Nemser & Remillard, 1996, p. 78-79).

At the same time, we wanted students to take ownership of their new

belief system. As such, we needed to create a learning environment that “confers




10/23


. . . both the power and the responsibility to take control of her own learning,

become aware of her personal epistemological commitments, represent her

conceptions to her peers and teacher clearly, and monitor her [or his] owninterpretations of . . . phenomena and the expressed views of others (Hewson

et al., 1998, p. 202). By acquiring this foundation, students of teaching are

better positioned to understand the importance of connecting disciplinary-

based knowledge with pupils’ lived experiences.

Developing a Culturally Relevant

Teaching Practice in the Pedagogy Lab

Culturally relevant teaching has three observable criteria: “an ability to

develop students academically, a willingness to nurture and support cultural

competence, and the development of a sociopolitical or critical consciousness”

(Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 483). Culturally relevant teachers, who embody

these dispositions and behaviors, create learning environments that support,

develop, and draw from the students’ cultural and ethnic identities. But gen-

erating this type of pedagogy cannot occur within the academy’s white walls

or with fragmented field experiences. Such insulated experiences reify tra-

ditional notions of racial separatism. So in the lab, we drew on students’Introduction to Teaching field experiences to disrupt the binaries created

from their previous monocultural experiences and helped them learn how to

engage with students and the assets they bring to the classroom. This deliber-

ately created dissonance demanded that the lab offer students of teaching

an intellectually safe space. We created this safe space with case-based

instruction.

Case-Based Instruction in the Pedagogy Lab

Drawing from the students’ understanding that a “laboratory” is a place to

experiment and practice a field of study, we used teaching cases to frame our

instruction. Teacher educators use cases to focus on the complexities of a

classroom and offer students an opportunity to connect theory with practice

in a supportive environment. According to McDade (1995) the most impor-

tant purpose of a teaching case is to create “realistic laboratories” so candidates

can apply research techniques, participate in a critical analysis of the cases,and use their problem-solving skills. Cases that focus on the issues of gender,

ethnicity, race, special needs, and language in authentic classroom events

provide students with opportunities to identify and analyze the instructional

hazards of whitewashing students’ identities. We used teaching cases in the

pedagogy lab to help students interrogate their pedagogical histories, learn




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how to draw on students’ assets to better support their academic progress,

and explore how that learning could be coupled with a sociopolitical

consciousness.The cases became a more powerful pedagogical tool when we coupled

them with an online discussion board. The online forum provided students

with an opportunity to engage in a threaded, asynchronous discussion about

each case. For students of teaching, this type of interactional reflection

offered them an opportunity to “focus on themselves, their own experiences,

life worlds, privileges, struggles, and positions in relation to others (their

students, their students’ parents, their students’ communities, and their students’

ways of knowing)” (Milner, 2006, p. 371). So although the cases offered a

safe environment in which to “practice” teaching, each person’s interactions

with the case were now posted and open to scrutiny by their peers. But their

postings also provided students the opportunity to chart how their profes-

sional practice was developing.

Developing an Embodied Understanding

of Practice in the Pedagogy Lab

Teaching, as a professional practice, is unique because no classroom situationis ever repeated and no one pedagogical strategy meets the needs of every

learner. The interactive and ever-changing dynamics of the classroom demand

that students of teaching develop a professional practice that continually

expands their intellectual capacity to make responsive and pedagogically

skillful decisions. For these reasons, the pedagogy lab was designed to “create

opportunities for learning that both call into question and extend participants’

current understanding of, and in practice” (Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2006,

p. 402). Furthermore, the lab’s curricular underpinnings needed to help stu-dents of teaching embody the disposition that views professional development

as an “unfolding circularity”6 “that is, as their understanding developed over

time, it presupposed and elaborated something already understood” (p. 392).

This type of learning and professional development challenges traditional

understandings of learning to teach as the acquisition of a finite package of

knowledge and skills and replaces it with an embodied understanding of

teaching as a professional practice that has no end point. This theoretical

framework, in combination with the theory of conceptual change and case- based instruction, grounded the lab’s pedagogical and curricular focus.

By marrying multicultural content with candidates’ disciplinary-based

L&S coursework and the pedagogical understandings they were developing

in their Introduction to Teaching course, students of teaching could develop




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a PCK-base that was intersubjective and culturally relevant. The research

presented in this article focuses on how students linked these traditionally

disparate bodies of knowledge.

Studying the Pedagogy Lab: The Research

Design, Participants, Data Sources, and Analysis

This project offers preliminary research on “how concepts from the academic

subjects in the colleges of letters and sciences can be taught in ways that

make them more valuable for the practice of teaching” (Floden & Meniketti,

2005, p. 287). The study took place at a large Midwestern University that

prepares over 1,000 teachers annually. The study’s focus was to examine

what students of teaching experienced through the pedagogy lab and how it

affected their ability to develop culturally relevant practices, particularly in

the traditional discipline-based content areas.

The 1-credit pedagogy lab met every other Friday morning from 8:00 a.m.

to 10:40 a.m. during the spring semester. Nine students from the Introduction

to Teaching class volunteered to participate in the lab, 8 women and 1 man.

All were White, middle-class individuals from suburban or rural backgrounds.

Two were parents of adolescent children; 7 were under 25 years of age.Our investigation was mixed-methods research. Data were generated

through participant-observations of the lab by one of the authors, student, and

instructor interviews, and a document analysis of various texts related to the

course (e.g., the newly created syllabus, readings, posted online discussion

forums, and student work). In addition, students were asked at the beginning

of the pedagogy lab course to examine a particular teaching case and generate

a pedagogically based response. During the last class meeting, students

responded again to the same case. Pre- and postlab scores were compared.Data were also generated from students’ responses to the other teaching cases

as well along with reflections about their classroom-based field experiences.

Two exit interviews were conducted; a group interview with the students and

a private interview with the instructor. Each interview was digitally recorded.

The transcribed interviews, the participant-observer’s field notes, and the text

samples from the course were entered into the qualitative software, Nvivo.

We used the analytic process of abduction (Agar, 1996) to structure our cod-

ing and analysis of these data. Our first coding began with broad sweeps acrossthe generated data. Preliminary patterns emerged. Initial coding nodes drew

from the theoretical foundations of the pedagogy lab and the theory of action

in the innovation’s design. A secondary analysis of these data revealed addi-

tional patterns tied to the students’ professional learning and development.




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Three themes emerged from this process. The first theme shed light on

how students’ PCK was strengthened through a deeper understanding of cul-

turally relevant pedagogy. A second theme illuminated how students used theirnew PCK to enhance their clinical reasoning skills with each case. The third

theme draws on the first two and highlighted students’ new levels of peda-

gogical confidence. Woven together, these themes made visible the lab’s role

in helping education-intended students learn the foundations of a culturally

relevant pedagogy grounded in the academic disciplines. Themes were resit-

uated in the data where we looked for connections, similarities, and negative

examples. Our interpretations of these data helped us better understand how

student of teaching develop PCK. More importantly, we were pushed to new

conceptions of how we might better prepare teachers for the students attend-

ing urban schools.

Interpretations That Extend Our Conceptions

of How to Develop Teachers for Urban Settings

Three noteworthy findings emerged from our interpretation of these data.

First, students in the pedagogy lab made rich and contextualized links between

their Introduction to Teaching course content and the diverse needs of pupils.For example, the students asked questions like “How are my actions in the

classroom linked to my deep-seeded beliefs about a child’s ethnicity?” and

“As their teacher, have I been a cultural anthropologist?” (Student AB, CRLab

field notes, March 7, 2007)

Students then used these links to enrich the PCK they were developing

in science, mathematics, social studies, and English/language arts. In other

words, this particular group of education-intended students came to know the

disciplinary-based content more broadly and in more complex ways becausethey had a concurrent eye on how they might translate it in ways that drew on

children’s ethnicity, gender, language, and social class. Two students shared

these understandings with each other during an online, asynchronous posting

as follows:

I really liked the apartment hunting case we looked at in class today.

It was easy to see how the project could be a great math lesson but

I never even thought about how it also could lend itself to talking aboutissues of social justice. (Student NW, CRLab Online Posting, April 5,

2007)

I agree with you. When we talk in Intro [Introduction to Teaching]

about integrating subject areas, I always thought it was something that




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would be easier to do in a Language arts classroom [sic]. In the lesson

we did today, I could see how talking about where students decided to

live, based on the budget they were given, could easily move into adiscussion about poverty and the inequities that exist in our society.

(Student LB, CRLab Online Posting, April 7, 2007)

This finding suggests that students’ PCK was strengthened through a

deeper understanding of culturally relevant, subject-specific, course content.

The second finding extends from the first. Case-based instruction helped

preservice teachers develop more complex clinical reasoning skills and, as a

result, they made more thoughtful and culturally relevant responses to the

cases. The cases used in the pedagogy lab brought the complexities of a

classroom into focus and allowed students to connect theory with practice in

a supportive environment. But each case was not an isolated pedagogical

event. Each case had a different intended learning outcome and each scaf-

fold students to more complex thinking about the relationships that support

academic learning. The instructor shared her purposeful selection of each

case as follows:

Students were first given a written case, where they had to dissect whatwas happening in the text’s scenario. They were asked to evaluate what

the teacher did well in his preparation for the class, the learning activity

he selected, and his actual teaching of the lesson. In the second case,

students watched a video that focused on a teacher’s actions in the

classroom and her interactions with the students. Then they discussed

the classroom dynamics. They were asked what they had observed then

pushed to talk about what they didn’t see. Their observations became

discussion points for exploring the underlying reasons for the behav-iors they noted. The third case was an interactive one. It had internet

hyperlinks that students could tap for additional information about the

situation and the people in the case.

As they read about this young, Hispanic first-grader’s struggles in

school, they made predications about what they would do if they were the

classroom teacher. Then they clicked on the links and accessed informa-

tion about his home life and his background so they were better prepared

for their talk with his parents. Other links let the students talk with thechild’s other teachers. As they progressed through the case, you heard

them saying, “Oh, well that kind of changes things.” This case provided

a forum where they could uncover their assumptions about the student,

his home life, and the school; assumptions they didn’t necessarily know

they had. (Ped Lab Instructor, CRLab Interview, May 15, 2007)




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Through this series of cases, students interrogated their understandings

about children unlike themselves and developed a new awareness about

their fledgling classroom practice. The instructor explained the pedagogicalvalue in these particular cases:

Helping students unpack their assumptions is critical in their develop-

ment as multicultural teachers. Only then, could they better predict the

outcome of the case.

At each point in the case, they wrote down what they were thinking. So

when they talked to the parents and discovered that neither spoke Eng-

lish, they revisited their initial assumptions and took a very different

approach to the case. And, because the focus teacher didn’t have a

hyperlink, students could not access her reasons for the classroom

decisions she made. This information gap created a pedagogical space

where students in the pedagogy lab could reconcile their original beliefs

with their new thinking. (Ped Lab Instructor, CRLab Interview, May

15, 2007)

The lab’s online component allowed students to post their responses tothe case then compare it with their classmates’ postings. The instructor’s

goal was to have the group of all White students engage in rich dialogue

about teaching students from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds

and to explore boundaries and standards in teaching. The instructor used

guidelines presented by Wasserman (1994) to encourage student dialogue by

directing their attention to an event of consequence in the case, elevating

tension between conflicting points of view, and using focus questions to

make sure they attended to pertinent urban issues. Through these interactive postings, students were able to draw on the connections they were making

between their Introduction to Teaching course and their field experiences.

One student explained it this way during a group interview,

I always got more out of the lab than just our Intro course alone. In

class, it was like, “here is the chapter.” In lab we had really deep con-

versations about what it means to be an effective teacher. The cases

gave me an example for everything we covered in Intro. We really hada chance to see how the theory we are learning works in the classroom.

(Student CD, CRLab Student Interview, May 11, 2007)

These theory-to-practice connections point to the third finding—students

developed a noticeable degree of confidence in their ability to critically assess




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classroom interactions and offer more culturally responsive options. As one

student shared, “It was eye-opening to me to realize just how little some

teachers do to level the playing field for all of their students. That realizationmade me feel much more confident in my own newly acquired skills” (JM,

CRLab student, May 4, 2007). This confidence was visible during the stu-

dents’ online discussions when they challenged each others’ postings with

higher levels of complex thinking. For example, during the lab’s first meet-

ing, students anxiously sought the “correct answer” to the case but during the

last session they felt people at the school had failed the student being studied.

More important, they detailed their reasoning for that decision. One student

confidently stated,

I think my partner and I did a better job assessing Andres than the actual

school officials. They took a “wait and see” approach in order to take

care of the situation. That approach would probably end up working as

well as the “if you ignore the problem it will go away” approach that

Andres’ classroom teacher seemed to be using. Everyone in Andres

case just needed to be involved. I mean really involved. But the parents

were never fully brought into the loop and they should have been. Just

because they did not speak English was not an excuse. Get a translatoralready [emphasis added]. (Student AB, CRLab Online Posting, March

16, 2007)

As students’ confidence levels grew, they used what they observed in

their field experiences to illustrate the complexities of a teacher’s decision

making. One student acknowledged it in the following way:

Now when I’m looking at a case and asked to think like a teacher.I think, “yeah I know what I would do.” But then I think, “I don’t know.

Because when I was in Mr. Joe’s classroom and you have 35 kids, it is

a little different.” Or in Intro, we’re talking about our role with parents

and at this site I am not even seeing where the parents are welcomed in

the school and now, in this case, you are asking what I would do?

(Student FB, CRLab Student Interview, May 10, 2007)

So even as they grew more confident, they recognized how much they stillneed to learn. This was the “unfolding circularlity” (Dall’Alba & Sandberg,

2006) we hoped the pedagogy lab would kindle.

This study’s findings highlight how the pedagogy lab helped students’

strengthen connections between their L&S disciplinary coursework and the

culturally relevant pedagogy they were developing in their SOE experiences.




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Through their participation in the lab, students were able to interrogate their

beliefs about teaching and learning, consider why new practices and their

associated values are better and experience such practices as learners withongoing support (Feiman-Nemser & Remillard, 1996). This type of cross-

campus, pedagogical connection has significance for how we prepare teachers

for urban schools.

Significance of the Findings and

Contribution to the Field of Teacher Education

McKinney et al. (2008) observed, “Although some urban high-poverty

schools have overcome the bureaucratic, societal, and cultural challenges

often perceived as obstacles to success, many continue to struggle and fall

short of meeting the educational needs of students in poverty” (p. 69). Today,

the high stakes accountability mechanisms in No Child Left Behind and the

demographic gap between who becomes a teacher and the children who

attend urban schools ought to force introspective examination of teacher

preparation programs. Teacher candidates need an understanding of urban

cultures and PCK skills so they can implement a meaningful and academi-

cally rich curriculum for the children who attend city schools. Teachercandidates also need to understand that a commitment to teach in multicultural

settings goes beyond a knowledge of curriculum and cognitive development

and includes the ability to “critically examine and interrogate their ideologi-

cal orientations as part of their learning process” (Bartolome & Trueba, 2000,

p. 282). Only then can students of teaching confront and scrutinize discon-

nects between their beliefs about teaching and learning and the professional

practice needed in today’s urban classrooms.

The academic importance having teachers draw connections between therichly diverse experiences of children’s daily lives and the specific nature of

the academic disciplines is well documented (see, for example, Doherty,

Hilberg, Pinal, & Tharp, 2003; Irvine & Armento, 2001; Ladson-Billings,

1995; Moll & Gonzalez, 2004; National Research Council, 2004, 2005;

Sleeter, 2005). But it requires teacher education courses to “focus on the real-

ity of [urban] schools, the diversity as well as the homogeneity that are pres-

ent within them, and on the knowledge and understanding necessary to meet

the needs of all students” (Milner, 2006, p. 345). In this study, the “pedagogylab” became a place where culturally relevant, disciplinary-based lessons could

be openly explored and debated.

Murray and Porter (1996) argued that understanding how “teacher educa-

tion students learn to convert their knowledge of subject matter” (p. 155) into




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learning opportunities for pupils remains the “weakest link” in teacher prepa-

ration. The significance of this link is amplified as research examining the

relationships between a teacher’s content knowledge understandings and their pupils’ acquisition of that content intensifies (see, for example, Goldhaber &

Brewer, 2000; Grossman, Stodolsky, & Knapp, 2004; Loewenberg Ball,

Thames, & Phelps, 2008; Solmon & Schiff, 2004; Wayne & Youngs, 2003).

The pedagogy lab encouraged prospective teachers to construct pedagogical

practices with academically rich content that have relevance to the social

and cultural realities of students attending urban schools.

The research presented in this article suggests that collaboratively

designed pedagogy lab, like the one described in this study, bridges the learning-

to-teach programmatic structures between the Colleges of Letters and Science

and Schools of Education. The curricular and pedagogical focus of the lab

takes what we know about effective teaching practices for diverse learners

and works backward to teacher preparation (Sleeter, 2001). With the expected

outcome of helping students in the city’s schools acquire the academic learn-

ing and agency needed to move beyond “the the powerful forms of struc-

tural inequality that persist in schools” (Murrell, 2006, p. 88), the lab

offered education-intended students opportunities to interrogate their learn-

ing histories and tackle the complexities of developing a responsive teaching practice.

That said, three limitations shape the study’s findings. First, this study does

not examine learning theories in relation to social identities and structural

inequalities. Such a study is beyond the scope of this work. Second, this

research does not examine how the program’s admissions criteria and course

structure influence who is attracted to and successfully enrolled in this particu-

lar certification program. We might find, for example, that using different

admission criteria would attract teacher candidates with a deeper understand-ing of urban schools. Third, because we studied students of teaching, we do not

know how they will translate what they have learned into their classroom prac-

tice. A longitudinal study, now underway, examines the question of transfer.

Despite these limitations, this research contributes to the knowledge base

on how to improve the preparation of teachers for urban schools by better

understanding the importance of cross-campus connections in learning to

teach professional sequence. Furthermore, the lab’s structure and focus is

applicable to the array of course/seminar/field-based configurations presentin most teacher-preparing institutions. The study’s findings highlight the

importance of having teacher education curricula provide future teachers with

the requisite knowledge and experiences necessary to develop an embodied

understanding of practice.




19/23


In this article, we have argued that the preparation of these teachers must

begin with teacher educators who articulate a vision of how to better infuse a

candidate’s experiences with the social and cultural contexts of students’ livesacross the academic disciplines valued by a learned society. By bringing

together multiculturalism, disciplinary-based content, and pedagogy in the

pedagogy lab, we advance possibilities on how to prepare culturally respon-

sive teachers. We believe this structure provides the conceptual coherence

needed to prepare teachers for a multicultural society. In doing so, teacher

education programs can be sites where the next generation of teachers better

supports the academic learning of children attending urban schools.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship

and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this

article.

Notes1. As is customary in all research, any of the participants’ identifying markers have

been removed. Great Lakes University is a pseudonym.

2. The 2001 Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization, commonly

referred to as No Child Left Behind, mandates that states must annually evaluate the

performance of both schools and districts on at least four components as follows:

test participation, achievement in reading and mathematics, and one “other” indica-

tor. For high schools, the “other” indicator is graduation rates. States can choose the

indicator for middle and elementary grades. When schools and districts do not meetthe established performance targets, they miss Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

3. This study was made possible in part by a Teachers for a New Era (TNE) grant

from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the Annenberg

Foundation. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility

of the authors.

4. We contend that the learning-to-teach professional sequence begins on admission

to a teacher-preparing institution, includes all required course and field experiences

in any college and department across the campus and extends through inductionand tenured employment.

5. Two project goals of the Teachers for a New Era project address the normative be-

liefs that surround pedagogical content knowledge and the complexities in prepar-

ing teachers who can make pedagogical decisions that meet the needs of a diverse




20/23


group of pupils. The first is to explore how programs can offer professional learning

opportunities so candidates engage with families to ensure coherence and develop

a repertoire of teaching strategies so children with a range of learning styles, abili-

ties, and cultural backgrounds have effective access to schooling (Teachers for a

New Era, 2004). The second is to consider how faculty can reconceptualize the

Letters and Sciences and School of Education learning relationships so teacher

candidates gain an integrative knowledge of the nature of a discipline (its premises,

modes of inquiry, and limits of understanding) and can translate this knowledge

and ways of thinking into learning opportunities for K-12 pupils.

6. This pattern of professional development was first identified by Martin Heidegger

in 1927.

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Bios

Barbara L. Bales is an associate professor of teacher education and instruction. Her

research examines how the theory of action in local, state, and national policies sup-

ports and/or constrains the translation of teacher learning and development into

program practices that ultimately influence the opportunities to learn afforded chil-

dren in public schools.

Felicia Saffold is an associate professor of teacher education. Her research interests

include teacher preparation for urban schools and multicultural education. She teaches

urban education courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

a new era in the preparation of teachers for urban schools.pdf

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