Understanding the critical thought process of preservice teachers in an urban teaching environment is essential for the establishment of a social justice oriented teacher education curriculum. Utilizing artifacts taken from a preservice teacher education program, specifically monthly critically reflective teaching journals, four distinct thinking…

Although the ubiquitous nature of whiteness has been scrutinized in research on teacher preparation in the United States, scholarship on how this concept impinges upon the field's overall culture, as well as on pedagogy, is scarce. Thus, I perform a critical autoethnographic study on the relationships among whiteness, pedagogy, and urban teacher…

Despite increasing diversity in U.S. schools, the topic of teacher effectiveness remains to be dominated by a universal narrative. This study applies critical theory, critical race theory, and culturally responsive pedagogy to position teacher effectiveness as contextual to urban schools and relational to the asset-based view of the learner. This…

A critical concern in preparing teachers for urban schools is helping them make sense of race, identity and racism in schools. Teacher education programs struggle with how to address these issues in classes of primarily White students. Through a document analysis, the present study highlights how teacher educators can use narrative--particularly…

This study explores teachers' beliefs about urban students and urban teaching. The author discusses some cultural aspects of these teachers' definitions of urban and points out their highlighting of race as an essential component of urban teaching. Even though race is rarely named, it is often at play in the teachers' descriptions of urban…

Democratic political systems and the democratic way of life is aspired by most people around the world. Democracy is considered to be morally superior to other forms of political systems as it aspires to secure civil liberties, human rights, social justice and equality before the law for everyone regardless of their gender, culture, religion and…

In this paper I examine how and to what extent various elements of my biography--race, ethnicity, gender, age, social class background, and prior personal and professional experiences--influenced my relationships with students in a graduate course examining the impact of race, gender, and social class on education. My lived experiences as an…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2009 proceedings, see ED504973.]