Education scholarship is unclear about what matters most to novice teachers' enactment of culturally responsive instructional practices. To better understand the factors that contribute to novice teachers' instructional decision-making, the authors used Role Theory as a framework for an in-depth analysis of three first-year urban teachers who…

Presented in this article is a case study of first-year teachers working in an urban school. Drawing on literature around the early-career experiences of teachers--including a unique vulnerability for emotional turbulence and belief change--this article examines the changing beliefs of brand new urban educators as they progress throughout their…

Understanding the beliefs of preservice teachers is an important area to investigate in the teacher education process. This article examines the relationship between preservice teachers' beliefs pertaining to diversity and urban schooling and how these inclinations contribute to a commitment to teaching urban students. Canonical correlation…

This mixed-methods study explores the differences in 1st-year urban teachers' classroom management beliefs and actions. The teachers in this study were in their first year of teaching in an urban context concurrent with their participation in a teacher education program offered at a large public university. Using program-wide surveys of 89…

Teacher learning communities are hailed by many as vehicles for reforming and elevating the professional status of teaching. While much research explores teacher community as a venue for measurable gains, our research examines the orientation of practitioner inquiry toward critical debate about effective instruction. Specifically, our study…

This paper reports on a study of elementary preservice teachers' inquiry-based practices, their efficacy beliefs, and the role beliefs had on two preservice teachers' practices in urban classrooms. Results show inquiry-based practices can be cultivated through field-based experiences and preservice teachers' efficacy beliefs, as it relates to…

Educating a nation of culturally, ethnically/racially, and linguistically diverse (CLD) students is one of the many challenges facing teachers and teacher educators, resulting in teachers' questioning their ability to improve learning for these groups. Yet teacher efficacy is significantly related to student achievement, motivation, and students'…

Understanding urban teachers' beliefs about African American students has become important because (a) many teachers are reluctant to teach students from other cultures, and (b) most teachers are European American. To construct a psychometrically sound measure of teacher beliefs, the authors investigate the measurement properties of a teacher…

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…

This study addresses the link between urban teachers' beliefs about their students' ability to succeed in astronomy and their instructional decisions and practices in response to those beliefs. The findings suggest that teachers believe that the student characteristics that are necessary for high achievement in astronomy include specific cognitive…

This research was an exploratory study in a large city in central Canada that examined kindergarten teachers' beliefs about students' knowledge of print literacy, as well as their beliefs about parental involvement with children in print literacy activities. The role of families' socioeconomic status was examined in relation to teachers' beliefs.…

This article describes a paid field experience designed to investigate teacher candidates' willingness to teach in urban schools. Seventy-three teacher candidates each participated in an urban field experience including 90 hours of tutoring and 12 hours of training. Data from pre and post surveys indicated no significant difference as the number…

Watts, Williams, and Jagers (2003) define critical consciousness as an awareness of existing social inequities and their history, including the processes and outcomes of oppression. Many scholars and reformers are asking secondary-level educators to deepen the critical consciousness of their teenage students by teaching them about ways in which…

This article reports findings from a qualitative study of preservice teachers' beliefs about the contexts of urban teaching. Participants were in their first semester of a K-6 licensure program designed to prepare them for urban teaching. Interviews and email reflective journal exchanges with the researcher were the data of the study, and…

This article considers the ways in which 17 novice teachers define and describe effective urban teaching and the stark contrasts that these teachers draw between effective urban teaching and effective teaching. The authors find that descriptions of students played a considerable role when participants made distinctions between effective teaching…