The Emerging Critical Pedagogies of Dance Educators in an Urban STEAM After-School Program for Black Girls

The preparation of urban educators has gained widespread attention across education policy, research, and practice. As US urban cities have become more diverse, the teacher workforce has not kept up, and the racial/ethnic demographics of students and teachers are disproportionately incongruent. In order to eradicate an education landscape that perpetuates white, middle-class ways of knowing and being, often at the expense of the cultural practices and cultural wealth of historically marginalized students of color, urban teacher education must be centered toward justice and rooted in critical pedagogies. The literature, albeit bleak, reveals that these perspectives must also be applied to urban dance education. Dance education programs have been significantly eliminated from urban schools over time, and although dance has historical roots in African and African diasporic cultures, dance education continues to be Eurocentric. This phenomenological case study examines the emerging critical pedagogies of undergraduate dance majors and minors who served as dance teachers in an urban Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) after-school program for 7-12-year-old Black girls. Findings reveal that (a) navigating race, place, and space; (b) mentorship and practice; and (c) critical reflection and self-efficacy were critical components of the urban dance educators’ emerging critical pedagogies. Implications for urban dance education and the broader field of urban education are provided.

Where Are They Now?

Available evidence suggests that inequities exist in the distribution of qualified teachers within high-poverty urban schools, and further, that such inequities adversely affect student achievement in these schools. This paper highlights the role of teacher education in addressing this challenge by describing the findings of a study of the graduates of University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Urban Teacher Enhancement Program. The career paths of program graduates who began teaching in urban schools were examined at the first-, fifth-, and tenth-year mark to investigate their longevity in urban schools, their perceptions of their greatest rewards and challenges, their perspectives regarding their reasons for entering and/or staying in urban teaching, and their thoughts about the role their teacher education program played in their career trajectory. Findings indicate that retention rates of study participants compare favorably with national averages, and that program participants felt that their teacher education program had a positive influence on their longevity in urban teaching.

“I think we’re all teachers even though we’re students”

Youth of color enrolled in urban public high schools, particularly those students who seek to be the first in their families to graduate from college, frequently encounter barriers to their college readiness and access. This study engaged an analytic approach built with culturally relevant and sustaining theories of education to examine how 10 youth of color enrolled in 12th grade at a Title 1 public high school in New York City provided and/or received support from peers as they navigated such barriers. The study utilized a youth co-researcher methodology to amplify student voices about an issue directly connected to their lives. Two findings emerged across data analysis: (1) students asserted collective notions of academic achievement and (2) challenged what they perceived as inequitable access to resources and opportunities as they supported their peers’ college readiness and access. Taken together these findings provide new insights into possibilities for building from students’ interactions with peers across contexts of curriculum, teaching, and research in urban schools.

Follow the Money or Follow the Mentors?

Since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, over 300 billion dollars have been funneled to schools through Title I funds. Qualifying school districts receive Title I funds to address disparities between disadvantaged students' academic achievement and their less impoverished peers. Substantial research has focused on the impact of funding and other significant factors on student achievement. One such significant factor impacting student achievement is chronic absenteeism, which is associated with lower student performance. Students from disadvantaged environments are more likely to miss school than students from higher-income families. This causal-comparative examination investigates the effects of a mentoring program on disadvantaged students in an urban secondary school. The findings reveal that students participating in mentoring for extended periods demonstrate significantly fewer absences, resulting in higher grade point averages. These findings indicate that low-budget school mentoring programs have a positive impact on absenteeism and student achievement.

Using Photovoice as a Teaching Tool to Explore Pre-service Teachers' Perceptions of Students from Impoverished Backgrounds

Despite the diversity of the American student population, the current teacher force and cohorts of future teachers are overwhelmingly white women from middle class backgrounds. In addition to the work around race, gender, and disability status, there is a clear need for us to help future teachers reconsider how they think about children experiencing poverty in urban schools and communities. Based on its use in an elementary education foundations course, this article provides a first-person accounting of how the pedagogical tool photovoice helped future teachers critically reflect on their perceptions of students from these backgrounds and offered their professor entry points for knowledge and skill development related to teaching students living in impoverished backgrounds.

Exploring High School Newcomer Youths’ Futures: Academic and Career Aspirations

A majority of newcomer youth who have recently migrated to the United States encounter a daunting task of mastering an entire high school curriculum in a new language while attempting to attain college readiness. Very little research exists that examines newcomer youths’ transitions from high school to college. Utilizing interviews with six high school newcomer students, this paper aims to answer the following questions: What are the career and college aspirations of high school newcomer youth? What barriers do they face in fulfilling their educational and career goals? The findings will better inform educators, specifically school counselors, about how to better develop their college and career readiness.

Teaching while Black: Best Practices for Engaging white Pre-service Teachers in Discourse Focused on Individual & Cultural Diversity in Urban Schools

In this article, I reflect on ways to improve my practice as a Black woman teaching in a white-dominated teacher education program through self-study in teacher preparation (S-STEP). I describe strategies that Black professors can use to engage white preservice teachers in discourse about individual and cultural diversity in urban schools. The general underlying principle in this focus is that one must create a safe space for white students, regardless of comfort, to communicate about individual and cultural diversity in urban schools. This is imperative, as research demonstrates many professors of color, specifically Black professors, experience hostile classroom environments. These experiences occur mostly within white-dominated institutions when students experience a shift of power from a white professor to a professor of color. This shift is intensified when the topics of the course focus on equity and social justice in urban schools. Practitioners of color are encouraged to explore ways in which these and others can be incorporated in courses that prepare white teachers to teach diverse populations in urban schools.

An Inquiry into the Self-Evaluation of Star Teacher Characteristics Necessary for Successful Urban Teaching

This study examines the degree of agreement between three Haberman Foundation-trained facilitators’ interviews and pre-service teachers’ self-evaluations of behavioral attributes associated with successful urban teaching. Using a quasi-experimental design research approach, data for this investigation was collected from 17 subjects who are all pre-service teacher candidates enrolled in an urban, metropolitan, co-educational research university. The Star Teacher Selection Interview and the Urban Teacher Behavioral Self-Evaluation Assessment served as the assessment instruments. Overall, findings revealed that the trained interviewers rated the pre-service teacher participants much lower on many of the behavioral attributes associated with successful urban teaching than did the subjects themselves.

Literacy 4 Brown Girls: An Explorative Study Centered on the Identity and Literacy of African-American Girls

The academic needs of African-American girls too often are not linked to their intersecting identities. These interlocked identities often go unseen, thus are rarely addressed in K-12 schools. Specifically, their identities are neglected in some of their English Language Arts classrooms through the sole use of hegemonic literary practices. Literacy 4 Brown Girls was implemented at a Midwest school for twelve weeks. The purpose of this case study was to explore the ways in which a literacy collaborative, designed with the identities of African-American girls in mind, might impact the identity construction of 12 African-American girls at a local school. Through careful document analysis, findings from this study reveal that African-American girls require school programs that focus on honoring, uplifting, and supporting the construction of their intersecting identities. Not doing so posits that the identities of African-American girls are unimportant and perpetuates their academic neglect and disengagement.