What’s Worth Knowing in Urban Education?
Location
PARB 227 (Second Floor)
Proposal Track
Practice Report
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
This presentation explores the question of what knowledge is most worth knowing in a social justice-oriented urban education professional development (PD) designed to provide international teachers of color in the state of Georgia with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to understand and respond to socio-historical events, social structures, laws, policies, educational environments, and individual attributes that can impair the educational experiences of urban learners. The development of a cohesive PD required instructional faculty to collaborate in decision-making processes to condense and restructure content from three credit-earning university courses in urban education into the urban education PD. The presentation focuses on three key areas instructional faculty identified as most worth knowing to support social justice goals in urban education: (1) teachers’ development of socio-political consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014), (2) teachers’ acquisition and use of culturally sustaining instructional strategies and practices (Paris & Alim, 2017), and (3) teachers’ acquiring and applying knowledge of the city and state socio-cultural and historical context into culturally responsive and sustainable instructional units (Gay 2018; Paris & Alim, 2017).
Keywords
urban education, teacher education, socio-political consciousness, social justice education, professional development
Professional Bio
Sabrina Ross, Ph.D., is a professor of educational research at Georgia Southern University. Her areas of interest include social justice education, urban education, and explorations of intersections of race, gender, and power within formal and informal educational spaces. Alma Stevenson, Ph.D., is a professor of literacy education at Georgia Southern University. Her areas of interest include socio-culturally responsive literacy pedagogy for diverse populations with an emphasis on Latina/os and African Americans and language, literacy development in the content areas with an emphasis on culturally diverse students in STEM fields, and education of children of migrant farm workers and mixed immigration status families. Calvin Walton, Ph.D., is a lecturer of Social Foundations of Education at Georgia Southern University. His areas of interest include performing arts education and African American male student achievement, Urban Education, culturally sustaining practices, and teaching and supporting students in poverty.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Ross, Sabrina N.; Stevenson, Alma; and Walton, Calvin, "What’s Worth Knowing in Urban Education?" (2022). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 12.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2022/2022/12
What’s Worth Knowing in Urban Education?
PARB 227 (Second Floor)
This presentation explores the question of what knowledge is most worth knowing in a social justice-oriented urban education professional development (PD) designed to provide international teachers of color in the state of Georgia with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to understand and respond to socio-historical events, social structures, laws, policies, educational environments, and individual attributes that can impair the educational experiences of urban learners. The development of a cohesive PD required instructional faculty to collaborate in decision-making processes to condense and restructure content from three credit-earning university courses in urban education into the urban education PD. The presentation focuses on three key areas instructional faculty identified as most worth knowing to support social justice goals in urban education: (1) teachers’ development of socio-political consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014), (2) teachers’ acquisition and use of culturally sustaining instructional strategies and practices (Paris & Alim, 2017), and (3) teachers’ acquiring and applying knowledge of the city and state socio-cultural and historical context into culturally responsive and sustainable instructional units (Gay 2018; Paris & Alim, 2017).
