Urban teacher education centers

Does urban education require a special breed of teacher? If so, what specific skills are required for teaching in an urban setting and how can these skills be best developed? We contend that urban education does demand a special breed of teacher and that we should establish urban teacher education centers to improve both pre-service and in-service education. Fantini and Weinstein, writing on what is urban about urban schools, declare that urban context is one in which there is persistent stress imposed by intensely concentrated social realities. These social realities include cities increasingly becoming ghettos of the nonwhite and poor, characterized by high crime rates, disease, illiteracy; cities where children come from disrupted single-parent homes, with low educational levels, unemployed fathers, and working mothers and must remain legally in school longer to achieve higher levels of training required for jobs; cities containing schools with high pupil turnover and dropout rates, high retardation in reading and arithmetic, low mastery of basic academic skills and motivational levels, and many mental health problems. In addition to these realities, we must recognize that most teachers possess middle-class orientation and, likely, experience cultural shock when first confronted with pupils whose values and goals differ completely from their own. Previous teacher training experiences have done little to provide new teachers with skills necessary to deal knowledgeably and skillfully with urban children

Context (archaeology · Functional illiteracy · Geography · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Teacher education · Educational Environments and Student Outcomes · Psychology

• Institution Building in Urban Education

  Sarane Spence Boocock, Morris Janowitz•American Sociological Review•1970

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