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Urban Schools (urban + school)
Terms modified by Urban Schools Selected AbstractsWide Awake to the World: The Arts and Urban Schools,Conflicts and Contributions of an After-School ProgramCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 1 2001Therese Quinn While the benefits of arts involvement are increasingly clear, policies and practices consistent with this recognition are not proceeding apace. Nearly half the schools in the United States have no full-time arts teachers and emphases on "standards" have led to the elimination of the arts in many urban schools. This case study of a multi-year after-school arts program in urban public schools explores challenges and tensions that emerged during the program's implementation. Focusing on understanding the place and purpose of an arts program in a specific community, we employed a grounded theory approach and used multiple data-gathering methods, ranging from observations and interviews to surveys. We found that in serving hundreds of students, employing dozens of staff, and aiming to meet several complex goals, this arts program faced technical challenges that undermined its effectiveness. The arts program also suffered from unaddressed conflicts regarding norms and values. Artists attempted to provide students opportunities for creative exploration, while school staff emphasized control, order, and academic goals. We discuss these tensions and the ways they undermined the arts program. [source] So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools by Charles M. PayneAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2010MICAH GILMER No abstract is available for this article. [source] Rites to Reform: The Cultural Production of the Reformer in Urban SchoolsANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2010K. Wayne Yang As neoliberal reformers are appointed to manage the "crisis" of U.S. public schools, their power has become a pressing reality for grassroots movements in education. I examine how the Small Schools movement in Oakland, California,just as the school district fell under state administrative control,employed rites of passage to socialize a grassroots identity: the reform officer. These rites represent a form of grassroots cultural power that disrupts the conditions of neoliberal domination.,[neoliberalism, school reform, counterhegemony, community organizing, cultural production] [source] Science education as a civil right: Urban schools and opportunity-to-learn considerationsJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 9 2001William Tate In this article I make the case that urban science education is a civil rights issue and that to effectively address it as such we must shift from arguments for civil rights as shared physical space in schools to demands for high-quality academic preparation that includes the opportunity to learn science. The argument is organized into two sections: first, a review of the school desegregation literature to make the case that urban science education for all is a civil rights issue; and second, an examination and critique of opportunity-to-learn literature, including an analysis of three opportunity-to-learn constructs to illustrate their potential as civil rights tools in science education. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 1015,1028, 2001 [source] Toward the School as Sanctuary Concept in Multicultural Urban Education: Implications for Small High School ReformCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2006RENÉ ANTROP-GONZÁLEZ ABSTRACT This article describes the school as sanctuary concept through the voices of students enrolled in a small urban high school that curricularly privileges the linguistic, cultural, and sociopolitical realities of its communities. Moreover, this particular school was founded by students and teachers over 30 years ago as a direct response to pedagogically and psychologically colonizing large comprehensive high schools in a major urban school district. According to students, a school becomes a sanctuary when there are four essential components in place. These sanctuary-like attributes include multiple definitions of caring relations between students and their teachers, the importance of a familial-like school environment, the necessity of psychologically and physically safe school spaces, and allowing students a forum in which they are encouraged to affirm their racial/ethnic pride. Implications for forwarding this concept within a larger discourse around urban school reform are discussed. [source] Teacher Identity and Agency in School Worlds: Beyond the All-Good/All-Bad Discourse on Accountability-Explicit Curriculum PoliciesCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2006KRIS SLOAN ABSTRACT Drawing on case studies of three elementary school teachers in a diverse urban school setting in Texas, the author explores the varied ways teachers actively read accountability-related curriculum policies and then respond to these policies. Rooted in classroom observations and extensive teacher interviews, the author examines issues of teacher identity and identity formation as a base from which to explore teacher agency vis-ŕ-vis accountability-explicit curriculum policies. His analysis suggests that (1) individual teachers actively read and respond to locally conceived accountability-explicit curriculum policies in varied, perhaps even unique, ways; (2) teacher identities are powerful means through which to understand these varied experiences with and responses to accountability-explicit curriculum policies; and (3) current understandings of teacher agency vis-ŕ-vis accountability-explicit curriculum policies as merely a capacity to resist,as does much of the literature that is critical of accountability,obfuscates important issues of teacher quality and equity. [source] Limits to self-organising systems of learning,the Kalikuppam experimentBRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, Issue 5 2010Sugata Mitra What and how much can children learn without subject teachers? In an attempt to find a limit to self organized learning, we explored the capacity of 10,14 year old Tamil-speaking children in a remote Indian village to learn basic molecular biology, initially on their own with a Hole-in-the-Wall public computer facility, and later with the help of a mediator without knowledge of this subject. We then compared these learning outcomes with those of similarly-aged children at a nearby average-below average performing state government school who were not fluent in English but were taught this subject and another group of children at a high-performing private school in New Delhi who were fluent in English and had been taught this subject by qualified teachers. We found that the village children who only had access to computers and Internet-based resources in the Hole-in-the-Wall learning stations achieved test scores comparable with those at the local state school and, with the support of the mediator, equal to their peers in the privileged private urban school. Further experiments were conducted with unsupervised groups of 8,12 year-olds in several English schools using the Internet to study for GCSE questions they normally would be examined on at the age of 16. We conclude that, in spite of some limitations, there are opportunities for self-organised and mediated learning by children in settings where they would otherwise be denied opportunities for good, or indeed any, schooling. We also show that this approach can be enhanced by the use of local or online mediators. [source] Listening to Students, Negotiating Beliefs: Preparing Teachers for Urban ClassroomsCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2008KATHERINE SCHULTZ ABSTRACT Learning to teach in urban schools is difficult, particularly when prospective teachers come from different racial, ethnic and/or class backgrounds than their students. The task of urban-focused teacher education programs is to prepare prospective teachers to learn and enact practices that enable them to teach successfully in under-resourced districts that offer both opportunities and constraints. In this article, we report on a 2-year ethnographic study designed to investigate how new teachers enacted a listening stance in teaching that was introduced in their preparation program. Taking a listening stance implies entering a classroom with questions as well as answers, knowledge as well as a clear sense of the limitations of that knowledge (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Lytle & Cochran-Smith, 1992; Schultz, 2003). The article focuses on how four teachers attempted to adopt a listening stance in their classroom practice, while also responding to the constraints of the standardized curriculum of their district. We conclude that the process of negotiating among teachers' beliefs, practices introduced in a teacher preparation program and district mandates is a critical practice for teachers to learn. We further suggest that in the current climate of high-stakes testing and mandated curriculum, explicit teaching of negotiation skills is likely to support more teachers to enter into and remain in classrooms. [source] Wide Awake to the World: The Arts and Urban Schools,Conflicts and Contributions of an After-School ProgramCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 1 2001Therese Quinn While the benefits of arts involvement are increasingly clear, policies and practices consistent with this recognition are not proceeding apace. Nearly half the schools in the United States have no full-time arts teachers and emphases on "standards" have led to the elimination of the arts in many urban schools. This case study of a multi-year after-school arts program in urban public schools explores challenges and tensions that emerged during the program's implementation. Focusing on understanding the place and purpose of an arts program in a specific community, we employed a grounded theory approach and used multiple data-gathering methods, ranging from observations and interviews to surveys. We found that in serving hundreds of students, employing dozens of staff, and aiming to meet several complex goals, this arts program faced technical challenges that undermined its effectiveness. The arts program also suffered from unaddressed conflicts regarding norms and values. Artists attempted to provide students opportunities for creative exploration, while school staff emphasized control, order, and academic goals. We discuss these tensions and the ways they undermined the arts program. [source] Disentangling the racial test score gap: Probing the evidence in a large urban school districtJOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2007Leanna Stiefel We examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. While gaps are partially explained by differences in student characteristics, such as poverty, differences in schools attended are also important. At the same time, substantial within-school gaps remain and are only partly explained by differences in academic preparation across students from different race groups. Controlling for differences in classrooms attended explains little of the remaining gap, suggesting little role for within-school inequities in resources. There is some evidence that school characteristics matter. Race gaps are negatively correlated with school size,implying small schools may be helpful. In addition, the trade-off between the size and experience of the teaching staff in urban schools may carry unintended consequences for within-school race gaps. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [source] Effects of fidelity of implementation on science achievement gains among english language learnersJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 7 2009Okhee Lee Abstract This study examined the effect of fidelity of implementation (FOI) on the science achievement gains of third grade students broadly and students with limited literacy in English specifically. The study was conducted in the context of a professional development intervention with elementary school teachers to promote science achievement of ELL students in urban schools. As the criterion for measuring FOI, we focused on the quality of instructional delivery in teaching science to ELL students. We measured FOI using both teachers' self-reports and classroom observations during the first year of the intervention. Science achievement was measured by a pretest and posttest over the school year. The results indicate that none of the measures of FOI using teachers' self-reports or classroom observations had significant effects on science achievement gains. The results are discussed in terms of issues about conceptualization and measurement of FOI in educational interventions. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 836,859, 2009 [source] Science education in urban settings: Seeking new ways of praxis through critical ethnographyJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 8 2001Angela Calabrese Barton The challenges faced in urban science education are deeply rooted in the ongoing struggle for racial, class and gender equity. Part of this struggle is tied to huge differences in class and involves making more equitable the distribution of resources. Another part of this struggle is tied to the rich diversity of children who attend urban schools and involves generating new ways of understanding, valuing, and genuinely incorporating into school-based practices the culture, language, beliefs, and experiences that these children bring to school. Thus, this article argues that to address these two challenges,and indeed to achieve a more just science education for all urban students, explicitly political research methodologies must be considered and incorporated into urban education. One potential route for this is critical ethnography, for this kind of methodology emerges collaboratively from the lives of the researcher and the researched and is centrally about praxis and a political commitment to the struggle for liberation and in defense of human rights. In making this argument, I have drawn from stories from my own research with homeless children. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 899,917, 2001 [source] Design, technology, and science: Sites for learning, resistance, and social reproduction in urban schoolsJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 7 2001Gale Seiler The teaching of science through activities that emphasize design and technology has been advocated as a vehicle for accomplishing science for all students. This study was situated in an inner7-city neighborhood school populated mainly by African American students from life worlds characterized by poverty. The article explores the discourse and practices of students and three coteachers as a curriculum was enacted to provide opportunities for students to learn about the physics of motion through designing, building, and testing a model car. Some students participated in ways that led to their building viable model cars and interacting with one another in ways that suggest design and technological competence. However, there also was evidence of resistance from students who participated sporadically and refused to cooperate with teachers as they endeavored to structure the environment in ways that would lead to a deeper understanding of science. Analysis of in-class interactions reveals an untapped potential for the emergence of a sciencelike discourse and diverse outcomes. Among the challenges explored in this article is a struggle for respect that permeates the students' lives on the street and bleeds into the classroom environment. Whereas teachers enacted the curriculum as if learning was the chief goal for students, it is apparent that students used the class opportunistically to maintain and earn the respect of peers. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 746,767, 2001 [source] Differences in the Correlates of Physical Activity Between Urban and Rural Canadian YouthJOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH, Issue 4 2007Constantinos A. Loucaides PhD ABSTRACT Background:, Despite the benefits of physical activity (PA), a significant proportion of youth remains inactive. Studies assessing differences in the correlates of PA among urban and rural youth are scarce, and such investigations can help identify subgroups of the population that may need to be targeted for special intervention programs. The purpose of this study was to assess differences in the correlates of PA between Canadian urban and rural youth. Methods:, The sample consisted of 1398 adolescents from 4 urban schools and 1290 adolescents from 4 rural schools. Mean age of the participants was 15.6 ± 1.3 years. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine the association between self-reported PA and a number of demographic, psychological, behavioral, and social correlates. Results:, Common correlates between the 2 locations included gender (with girls being less active than boys) perceptions of athletic/physical ability, self-efficacy, interest in organized group activities, use of recreation time, and friends' and siblings' frequency of participation in PA. Active commuting to school and taking a physical education class were unique correlates of PA at the multivariate level in urban and rural students, respectively. Variance explained in PA ranged from 43% for urban school students to 38% for rural school students. Conclusions:, Although more similarities than discrepancies were found in the correlates of PA between the 2 geographical locations, findings from this study strengthen the policies that argue for a coordinated multisector approach to the promotion of PA in youth, which include the family, school, and community. [source] Successes and challenges in triangulating methodologies in evaluations of exemplary urban schoolsNEW DIRECTIONS FOR EVALUATION, Issue 101 2004Donna Penn Towns This chapter illustrates how triangulating evaluation methodologies allow for stakeholder involvement and revealed contexts that a narrower approach might fail to illuminate. [source] School-based promotion of fruit and vegetable consumption in multiculturally diverse, urban schoolsPSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 1 2008Jessica Blom-Hoffman Rates of childhood overweight, have reached epidemic proportions (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001), and schools have been called on to play a role in the prevention of this medical condition. This article describes a multiyear health promotion effort,the Athletes in Service fruit and vegetable (F&V) promotion program,which is based on social learning theory for urban, elementary school children in kindergarten through third grade. Children participate in the program for a period of 3 years. The goals of the program are to increase opportunities for children to be more physically active during the school day and to help students increase their F&V consumption. This article describes the F&V promotion components of the program that were implemented in year 1, including implementation integrity and treatment acceptability data. Year 1 evaluation data demonstrated that the program is acceptable from the perspective of school staff and was implemented by school staff with high levels of integrity. Hallmarks of the program's successful implementation and high acceptability include (a) having a school-based program champion; (b) designing the program to include low-cost, attractive, interactive materials; (c) including many school staff members to facilitate a culture of healthy eating in the school; and (d) spreading out implementation responsibilities among the multiple staff members so that each individual's involvement is time efficient. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] | |||||||||||||