What’s
Urban
Got To
Do With
It?:
Meanings
of
“Urban”
in Urban
Teacher
Preparation
and
Development
by
Victoria
Chou and
Steven
E. Tozer
In
teacher
preparation
and
development,
as in
all
educational
endeavors,
we take
for
granted
that
context
makes a
difference
and
situated
knowledge
is
essential.
Yet we
do not
often
enough
share
with one
another
precisely
how we
believe
context
makes a
difference.
We
believe
that
work in
high-stakes
contexts,
in
particular,
demands
that we
make our
“urban”
assumptions
as
explicit
as
possible,
for the
modifier
“urban”
in
“urban
education”
frequently
creates
tension
of
understanding
and
communication.
As we
know,
“urban”
is often
a coded
marker
for
conditions
of
cultural
conflict
that
have to
do with
racism
and
economic
oppression.
The term
is used
sometimes
in a
self-congratulatory
manner,
as in,
“I teach
in an
urban
school,”
a
variant
of the
more
obvious,
“I
taught
for five
years in
the
inner
city.”
Such an
assertion
often
belies
the
speaker’s
demarcation
of “we”
and
“they,”
where
“they”
are
viewed
as
different,
perhaps
deficient,
from the
speaker's
perspective.
The
present
paper
attempts
to make
explicit—from
the
perspective
of urban
teacher
educators—what
we
believe
to be
“urban”
about
urban
teacher
preparation
and
development
and how
these
understandings
affect
the
ability
of
partners
invested
in
teaching
and
learning
to
achieve
their
goals.
While
urban
and
non-urban
are
often
treated
as
disjunct
categories,
we
agree
with
Weiner
(2000,
pp.
370-371)
that:
Urban-ness
is
best
understood
as
existing
on a
continuum.
. .
the
structural
characteristics
of
urban
school
systems,
their
size
and
bureaucracy,
are
the
most
salient
factors
because
they
frame
the
interaction
of
the
other
elements.
Size
and
bureaucracy
intensify
the
contradiction
between
teaching
and
learning
as
personal,
human
activities,
on
the
one
hand,
and
the
standard/ization
that
is
intended
to
make
urban
schools
efficient,
fair,
and
impartial.
To size
and its
resultant
bureaucracy,
we add
the
heterogeneity
of
people
in the
urban
environment
and the
infusion
of
cultural
politics
in urban
school
reform.
Taken
together,
these
three
dimensions
begin to
define
for us
what is
distinctively
challenging
about
the
urban
educational
environment:
the
large
size of
urban
systems,
the
ethnic
and
socioeconomic
heterogeneity
of urban
populations,
and the
cultural
politics
of urban
school
reform.
The
interaction
among
these,
we
argue,
helps
define
what
educators
need to
understand
if we
wish to
serve
all of
the
nation’s
school
children
well.
Follow
the
links,
below,
for
brief
sketches
that
clarify
what we
mean by
each
variable.
These
three
variables
significantly
affect
the
conditions
of
teaching
and
learning
in urban
school
districts.
The
enterprise
of
education
in an
immense
urban
school
bureaucracy,
subject
to
political
forces,
that
serves
an
ethnically
and
economically
heterogeneous
student
body is
qualitatively
different
from
counterpart
operations
in
relatively
autonomous,
small,
more
homogeneous
school
districts.
Any one
of the
three
variables
alone
might
render
difficult
the
development
of
social
infrastructure
that
fosters
trusting
learning
communities
and
supports
coherent
instructional
programming;
with the
three
operating
together,
the
challenge
becomes
all the
more
daunting.
Indeed,
the
challenge
might be
framed
as a
two-part
problem.
On the
one
hand,
how can
scarce
resources
be
directed
to
meaningful
systemic
change
that
fosters
learning
communities?
On the
other
hand,
how can
policymakers
and
politicians
be
convinced
to stay
the
course
over the
several
years it
will
take for
true
systemic
change?
The
stakes
have
never
been so
high for
the
children
and
youth
targeted
by
Bush’s
No Child
Left
Behind
Act.
What
is
Urban?