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Promoting Social Justice in an Urban Secondary Teacher Education Program

Posted on: Sunday, 4 September 2005, 03:01 CDT

Key words: social justice, urban, teacher, education

According to the U.S. Department of Education, school districts throughout the United States will hire approximately 22 million teachers in this decade (2000). The majority of these teachers will be white middle-class monolingual females, who prefer to work in suburban settings where they receive higher salaries and better benefits and teach white middle-class children (Zeichner and Hoeft 1996). The result is a severe shortage of qualified teachers in urban school districts that have an increasing number of culturally diverse students (Gay 2000). School districts typically address these shortages by hiring unlicensed or full-time substitute teachers, creating a picture of urban schools as inferior because of poor teaching and over-populated classrooms (DarlingHammond 1999). This depiction, a deficit paradigm of urban schools, ignores a host of social, political, and institutional factors that can define success for students who are often labeled as "at risk" instead of "at promise" (Swadener and Lubeck 1995).

The racial and cultural navet of the pool of preservice teachers entering into many teacher education programs presents a challenge, one that is both daunting and transformative. To counter the negative idea of urban schools, teacher education programs in the U.S. must commit to new teacher education strategies that will ultimately prepare preservice teachers to teach in increasingly diverse schools. To be effective, these programs must systemically integrate concepts and ideas that will eventually change the way preservice teachers define leaching and learning. Nieto, for example, suggests that teacher education programs need to promote diversity and "make social justice ubiquitous in teacher education, and encourage teaching as a life-long journey of transformation" (2000, 180). Therefore, they must have the skills and dispositions to continuously reflect on their social identity, the identity of their students, and the content and pedagogy they adopt in their teaching practice. According to Delpit, this cultural gap requires preservice teachers who may be culturally different from their students and future students to begin their teacher preparation programs by both examining who they are culturally and establishing a relationship with their students. She states:

We say we believe that all children can learn, but few of us really believe it. Teacher education usually focuses on research that links failure and socioeconomic status and cultural difference, and failure and single parent households. It is hard to believe that these children can possibly be successful after their teachers have been so thoroughly exposed to so much negative indoctrination. When teachers receive that kind of education, there is a tendency to assume deficits in students rather than to locate and teach to strength. To connect this tendency, educators must have knowledge of children's lives outside of school so as to recognize their strengths. (1995, 172)

Thus, before preservice teachers can be expected to understand and address issues of diversity in the classroom, teacher education programs must provide these future educators with authentic opportunities for critical examination of their own entrenched values, belief systems, and cultural heritage (Cochran-Smith 1998).

The epistemological perspective, the teacher as a change agent, also challenges the role of teacher educators particularly as they prepare preservice teachers to think critically about social justice issues. We use the following definition of social justice, which was adapted from Novak (2000). Social justice involves "inspiring, working with, and organizing others to accomplish together a work of justice . . . that primarily involves the good of others."

Therefore, the ultimate responsibility for transformation within teacher education programs rests on the shoulders of university faculty who make vital decisions about course design. Our response to this challenge has been the development of a field-based teacher education program that includes a strong commitment to urban education and a dedicated partnership with community schools and social service centers.

The Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) secondary education Learning to Teach/ Teaching to Learn (LT/TL) program is a four-semester block-sequenced program facilitated by faculty members who jointly plan and teach cohorts of twenty-five to thirty students each semester. Each semester the new "cohort" of students is assigned to a Professional Development School^PDS) site where early and subsequent field experiences take place (The Holmes Group, 1990). The PDS sites for the first semester block, called "Diversity and Learning," are located in urban middle schools in the state's largest school system, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS). IPS has five traditional high schools, fifteen middle schools, and fifty-five elementary schools. More than 62 percent of the students are eligible for free lunch and 66.4 percent are from minority backgrounds. The average college attendance rate is 46 percent, compared to the overall state average of 64 percent (Indianapolis Public Schools).

As one of several interdisciplinary teaching teams, the authors of this paper have worked collaboratively to create experiences that require students to examine their personal notions of urban schools and communities. We have experimented with a variety of approaches to make these learning experiences meaningful, while integrating key concepts related to diversity and social justice as the basic theme for block one. The instructional approaches used in the Diversity and Learning block are based on constructivist and social constructivist theories of learning that require preservice teachers to be actively involved in their own learning.2 We have created projects and class assignments that require preservice teachers to "step out of their box" and expand the borders of their own knowledge. We view this instructional approach as important not only because we believe that it influences students' evolving conceptions of social justice, but also because it challenges us as instructors to constantly look for ways to make the integrated content of the block meaningful for students. For example, early in the semester, when we introduce theories of psychosocial development, we ask our students to prepare a poster that describes their view of the adolescent experience in American society. We discuss these posters and draw out the major themes, but it is not until they read Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace (1995) later in the semester that they come to realize that their conception of adolescent development was framed exclusively with respect to their own culture and experience.

In another activity early in the semester, students participate in the Primos and Segundans simulation which is designed to lead them to explore issues of diversity and culture. They are assigned to either the Primo (dominant) group or the Segundan (minority) group. In the simulation, a grant from a fictitious foundation gives the Primos the power to determine the development of a Segundan school and community, but the Primos must collaborate with the Segundans in order to receive the grant money. At the beginning of the simulation, both groups meet separately to review their character roles and discuss their strategy. Each group is also given inconsistent information so that they develop preconceived notions of each other. After the groups meet separately, they come together to discuss their strategies. Normally, the groups spend time discussing the stereotypes they have of one another and often fail to develop a plan. In our experience, as students work through the simulation, they are confronted by different cultural values and precepts. The tension produced by the differing views allows the students to look back at the simulation and identify how their frame of reference can negatively impact others, which leads to a discussion of how this experience might influence their early perceptions of the PDS and their field experience (see Morrone, Medina, and Anderson 2002 for detailed instructions for the Primos and Segundans simulation).

Another project, which has formed the basis for much of our research on students' evolving conceptions of social justice, is the Kozol project. The Kozol project is a semester-long project that begins with the reading of Amazing Grace, which chronicles the lives of families and children living in poverty in Mott Haven, New York. The first part of the Kozol project requires that each student identify five key passages in the book that were especially meaningful to them and to write a reflection on those passages. On the assigned day, students bring their passages and reflections to class and engage in small group discussions of the passages and their reflections on the passages. The second part of the Kozol project is one in which students are grouped into teams and asked to conduct extensive research on the community's assets. We frame the purpose of the assignment as follows:

"The purpose of this activity is to provide you with a researc\h experience that will give you a comprehensive understanding of your school field experience community. We believe this project will increase your awareness of the school and community strengths as you recognize opportunities for building upon those assets."

Before students begin their research, they are first asked to conduct a "windshield survey" of the community surrounding the PDS. This survey is designed to provide students with basic information about the community, thus providing the context for their more extensive research into the assets within the community. The windshield survey questions include questions about housing, common areas, transportation, service centers, stores, race and ethnicity, religion, politics, media, and community personality. After completing the windshield survey, the students are divided into groups for the purposes of engaging in more extensive research into one aspect of the community's assets. The purpose of this part of the Kozol project is to allow preservice teachers to research the assets and resources that exist within the community, thus discouraging a deficit perspective of the school and surrounding community (Kretzmann and McKnight 1993). This research requires examination of written documents and interviews with key persons living or working within the community. We stress that the interviews must be conducted with tact and respect for community members and that obtaining the data should never be a priority over respect for the rights and feelings of interviewees. Each team is to plan their visit day by identifying places and people to see and making appointments in advance. Students may gather data before or on the day of the visit to the community site, depending on the information they are seeking. There are a total of eight teams who research various aspects of the community. see appendix 1 for a complete list of topics, possible sources of information, and suggested study questions for each team.

After completing their research, each group prepares a written report and presents highlights of their findings in a short PowerPoint presentation. The written report includes responses to the suggested questions and other data obtained through their research. The students are also asked to include the names of people and places they visited and the addresses and phone number of visited destinations. The PowerPoint presentations are later compiled into a single presentation and presented to the PDS school faculty, administrators, and interested community members.

Another key requirement in this course is critical reflective journaling. We adopted a framework for the journals based on the work of Mezirow (1991), which includes a five-step progressive process that includes specific prompts. These prompts guide preservice teachers by helping them to focus on events in their field experience and critically reflect on their perspectives of those events while simultaneously linking their reflection to the content of the block (see Medina, Morrone, and Anderson for a detailed explanation of these journals).

The preceding example from the Diversity and Learning block situated within the Learning to Teach/ Teaching to Learn secondary education program program illustrates how we have attempted to balance knowledge, theory, and practice while providing a connection to what students are observing in their field experiences. Our recent research suggests that the Kozol project provides an authentic way to expand those boundaries while also providing a way to address concepts related to diversity, social justice, and equity in the block. Specifically, we found that the majority of our students reported that their experiences in the Diversity and Learning block changed the way that they define social justice. For some students, the block was "truly an eye-opening experience," but for the majority of students, the block provided the opportunity for critical reflection on their own views of teaching and social justice. Students highlighted their early field experience and the Kozol project as the most important reasons for the change in their conceptions of social justice. It is our hope that through the Diversity and Learning block, our students will continue to develop a critical understanding of the complexity of race, class, and ethnicity in urban schools and ultimately, to engage their own students in discussions of social justice.

NOTES

1. A PDS is defined as a regular elementary, middle, or high school that works in partnership with a university to develop and demonstrate improved quality in teacher preparation, faculty development (at both K-12 and university level) and student achievements (The Holmes Group, 1990).

2. Constructivism refers to the belief that all human knowledge is constructed. We believe that it allows for both an emphasis on education for individual cognitive development as well as an emphasis on education for social transformation.

REFERENCES

Cochran-Smith, M. 1998. Color blindness and basket making are not the answers: Confronting the dilemmas of race, culture, and language diversity in teacher education. American Educational Journal 32 (3): 493-522.

Darling-Hammond, L. 1999. Educating teachers for California's future. Report prepared for the Teacher Education Summit of California College and University Presidents. Los Angeles: lames Irvine Foundation. http://www.irvine.org/publications/by-topic/ education.shtml/ (accessed May 2002).

Delpit, L. 1995. Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press.

Gay, G. 2000. Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

The Holmes Group. 1990. Tomorrow's schools: Principles for the design of professional development schools. East Lansing: Michigan State University.

Indianapolis Public Schools, http://www.mustang.doe.state.in.us/ trends/corp (accessed September 2001).

Kozol, J. 1995. Amazing grace. New York: Harper.

Kretzmann, J. P., and J. L. McKnight. 1993. Building communities from the inside out: A path toward finding and mobilizing a community's assets. Chicago, IL: ACTA.

Medina, M. A., A. S. Morrone, and J. A. Anderson. Forthcoming. Students' evolving conceptions of social justice.

Mezirow, J. 1991. Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Morrone, A. S., M. Medina, and J. A. Anderson. 2002. Social justice as an interdisciplinary theme in teacher education. Journal for the Art of Teaching 9 (1): 37-55.

Nieto, S. 2000. Placing equity front and center. Journal of Teacher Education 51 (3): 180-88.

Novak, M. 2000. Defining social justice. http://www.firstthings. com/ftissues/ft0012/opinion/novak.html (accessed May 2001).

Swadener, B. B., and S. Lubeck. 1995. The social construction of children and families "at risk": An introduction. In Children and fami lies at promise, ed. B. B. Swadener and S. Lubeck, 1-14. Albany: State University of New York Press.

U.S. Department of Education. 2000. Teacher researching and disseminating what works, http://www.gov/inits/teachers/ recruit.html (accessed May 2001).

Zeichner, K. M. and K. Hoeft. 1996. Teacher socialization for cultural diversity. In Handbook of research on teacher education, 2nd ed., ed. J. Sikula, T. Buttery, and E. Guyton, 525-47. New York: Macmillan.

Monica A. Medina is a lecturer in the Teacher Education Program and Anastasia S. Morrone, PhD, is an associate professor of educational psychology at the Indiana University School of Education in Indianapolis. Jeffrey A. Anderson, PhD, is the director of the Center for Urban and Multicultural Education in the Indiana University School of Education at IUPUI.

APPENDIX

Community Assets and Resources Research

APPENDIX

Community Assets and Resources Research

APPENDIX

Community Assets and Resources Research

APPENDIX

Community Assets and Resources Research

Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS May/Jun 2005

Source: Clearing House, The

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