This article examines the effects of a statewide effort to reduce college remediation rates by training high school teachers and providing them with an expository reading and writing curriculum. The authors rely on mixed methods, including observations, teacher and student surveys, and test data from urban high schools. Findings suggest that the…

This research examines how urban adolescents of color who are placed at risk of academic and social failure interpret and respond to noble and ignoble purposes constructed in media texts. Drawing from New Literacy Studies, which provide impetuses for educators and researchers to explore youth's literacy practices and media engagements as they…

Learning cycles were developed in Brazil as an innovative project in order to address the needs and characteristics of the country's growing heterogeneous urban population. This new school model aims at reducing dropout rates and student failure as well as providing a non-interrupted school experience for diverse learners. In this article, the…

This study examines the evidence for the effectiveness of professional development using a sample of ten elementary school teachers. These teachers were part of a larger intervention study that investigated the impact of a teaching model, Dynamic Pedagogy on student mathematics achievement. Positive results were obtained from the analysis of three…

This study focused on a concept entitled shared ethnography. The researcher and youth participants share race in common. Critical Race Theory was used to analyze the reflective journal. An after school science program in a high poverty urban environment provided the context for this study. The findings of the study suggested that when researcher…

Drawing on case studies of five elementary school teachers in one inner city school, the author explored ways teachers foster social inclusion in their classrooms. Rooted in classroom observations and extensive teacher interviews, teachers' teaching methods and practices were examined as a base from which to explore socially inclusive pedagogy in…

This paper develops the argument that new literacies constitute an indispensable foundation for developing school discourse among 1.5 and newcomer urban adolescents. A mother and literacy educator presents insights learned from indirectly participating in co-constructing Standard English discourse with her newcomer adolescent son through video…

This article describes how ten exemplary urban school principals worked together under a Wallace Foundation Grant to advance the understanding of urban school leadership. The grant's intent was to contribute to the development of a national model for the assessment of master principals by demonstrating how building-level leadership in urban…

The purpose of this study was to examine urban teachers' identified strengths in varied cognitive, affective, and psychological capacities, and their impact on self-efficacy and teacher practices. Clifton and Anderson in the Gallup Organization's Strengths Quest (2004) presented compelling evidence suggesting a mind-set of "what's right with me"…

This study continues a line of empirical work examining the extent to which incorporating movement into learning conditions enhances performance for African American students. To date, few studies have examined different types of movement opportunity. As such, five qualitatively different movement conditions were tested in an urban sample of 100…

Cultural brokering has been identified as an important skill for practitioners in urban school districts who are attempting to improve connections between home and school. This paper describes an evaluation of the special education liaison program in Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), a large urban district located in the Midwest. Findings from…

The purpose of this study was to examine preservice teacher learning in an integrated course and field experience in an urban school-university partnership. Study participants included two cohorts of preservice teachers at a large, northeastern research university who were completing a semester-long experience of site-based coursework and…

This is an investigation of secondary mathematics teachers' understanding of performance-based tasks with respect to the contextual design of tasks that promote urban students' engagement and pursuit in learning mathematical concepts. We examined the alignment of teacher designed tasks with their personal definitions of tasks; then further…

This study contrasted the perspectives of 101 K-12 public school teachers and 271 African American high school seniors regarding the characteristics of outstanding teachers. Data from surveys were analyzed using univariate and bivariate statistics. The results revealed six qualities that both teachers and students agree are characteristics of…

This study's purpose was to pair motivational orientation and ethnicity in a sample of urban African American middle school students (n = 213). Through multivariate analyses, the results revealed differences in motivational orientation between eighth graders when compared to their younger peers. The study supports the hypotheses of: a) the…