Using a learning design perspective on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I examine how accountability policy shaped urban educators' instructional sensemaking. Focusing on the role of policy-rooted classifications, I examine conversations from a middle school mathematics teacher team as a "best case" because they worked diligently to comply…

This article draws on oral history testimonies to examine the experiences of participants in the inaugural 1990 cohort of Teach For America (TFA)--a group of young people dubbed the "best and brightest" of their generation and tasked with "saving" urban education. For 25 years, TFA has operated according to the principle of the…

The field of publicly funded early childhood education continues to evolve into a discipline in which early educators are expected to teach a more culturally and linguistically diverse student population a standardized set of knowledge and skills so that they can meet policymakers' academic achievement requirements. This creates a range of…

This qualitative exploratory study, informed by grounded theory, used questionnaires and unstructured interviews based on fictionalized vignettes to examine urban, public, middle-school White teachers' attitudes about middle-school Black boys, questioning whether and how such attitudes might influence classroom interactions. Twenty-four…

Inquiry-based and interdisciplinary teaching practices exemplify constructivist approaches to education capable of facilitating authentic student learning; however, their implementation has proven particularly challenging within certain contexts in the United States. This qualitative study considers one such context via an investigation of…

This study examines the integration of environmental education (EE) into an after-school program in the Bronx borough of New York City. In this qualitative case study, focus group interviews were conducted to first determine parent and educator interest in and barriers to participation in nature programs and incorporation of EE into curriculum.…

Some researchers believe that collaboration between schools and community stakeholders--including families, educators, community organizations, and businesses--is the key to improving public education. However, broad and inclusive community-school partnerships are rare. Instead, we frequently hear about friction between communities and their…

Many traditional university-based and alternative route teacher preparation programs have been developed to prepare new teachers to work in urban, high minority, and high-poverty classrooms. There is little literature that documents the outcomes of these programs designed specifically for urban environments or the practices of teachers who…

The Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) Yearbook, Volume 34, includes papers presented at the annual conference, which have gone through a double peer review process. It also includes the Presidential Address and the keynote addresses given at the conference. For ALER's 55th annual meeting, the Association of Literacy…

Helping teachers to effectively use culturally relevant instructional practices can help the educational community close the literacy gap for African American males. This study examines effective secondary English teachers and their high achieving African American male students. Using critical race and sociocultural theories as a conceptual…

This study explores three Korean American social studies teachers' experiences of teaching social studies, focusing on their curricular and pedagogical perceptions and practices. Framed by sociocultural theory, this study aims to shed light on the heterogeneous stories and socially and culturally contextualized teaching experiences of Korean…

The purpose of this narrative study was to explore the thoughts, perceptions, and experiences of 12 urban middle school teachers who were once urban middle school students. The study sought to discover reasons why these teachers returned to urban middle schools to teach and why they decided to stay. A qualitative methodology, using the…

The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Toward the goal of improving teacher quality and the experience balance, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, the Philadelphia…

This was a mixed methods study that examined the developmental education program at an urban public Maryland community college. The data were collected from interviews with a former English Chair, a former Math Chair, and the Director of Institutional Research. Each was selected because of his and her expertise. Data were also collected from one…

Although there is extensive documentation of minority overrepresentation in special education, knowledge of the factors that create the context within which disproportionality occurs is limited. To gain an understanding of the local processes that may contribute to special education disproportionality, we interviewed 66 educators about their…