Drawing on ethnographic data of an urban school, this paper contrasts how two White female teachers take up the idea of 'teaching for social justice.' Fourth-grade teacher Maestra Rachel enacts a superficial understanding focused solely on curricular topics, while third-grade teacher Maestra Jennifer roots her teaching in an understanding of how…

White Savior Industrial Complex (WSIC) encapsulates a myth that non-White communities need White outsiders to rescue them. WSIC is one of many ways well-intentioned outsiders fail to serve communities, and teacher education programs perpetuate WSIC by obscuring race, Black culture, and White privilege. In addition to WSIC theory, the author used…

This research explores the cognitive dissonance experienced by novice teachers when entering the teaching profession, specifically around cultural competence while teaching in the urban core. The study builds upon previous research by Adam Eckard, who investigated the impact of teacher preparation programs on teacher identity development in urban…

The consistency of a predominantly White special education teaching workforce in urban classrooms and the significant increase in the enrollment of culturally diverse students have fueled concerns about equity and access in special education (Artiles et al., 2010; Zion & Blanchett, 2017). Scholars advocate that all teachers need to understand…

Educators come to their work with many personal and educational achievements and accomplishments. They are provided with curriculum, learning standards, and expectations at the school, district, and state levels. Often, the respective identities and lived experiences of the educator are in stark contrast to those of the students they teach,…

This paper explores the ways in which success in school is constructed by a majority White teaching staff during day-to-day classroom practices and schoolwide policies, such as the disciplinary systems at a "no-excuses" charter school in one of the largest urban districts in the U.S. Stakeholders were assessed by interviews and…

The achievement gap between elementary students of Color, particularly, economically disadvantaged elementary students of Color and White students continues to be a concern. The problem in this study was that some White teachers working in urban elementary school districts have failed to include CRP practices in their instruction of economically…

A central issue teacher education programmes face is adequately preparing a majority White teacher population to address issues of race and diversity while meeting the varying academic needs of racially/ethnically diverse students. In examining the preparation of future educators, teacher education research confirms the importance of racial…

The single-site case study described herein is part of a two-year professional development (PD) initiative aimed at helping teachers from an urban elementary (K-8) school learn how to implement explicit, transactional comprehension strategy instruction across grades using culturally relevant books. This paper describes the urban elementary…