The purpose of this research was to examine the disconnect between urban school expectations and actual lived realities of marginalized students. Taking into consideration the conversation surrounding the definitions of urban education, and the importance of school connectedness with youth, we chose to focus on the lives of five former high…

I examine how three elementary-level preservice teachers of Color cultivated their asset-, equity-, and justice-oriented pedagogical learning and identities through multilayered community-engaged tasks. Systemic and structured support from multiple stakeholders played a critical role in helping the preservice teachers of Color to promote and…

In this article, we recount our experiences learning from and with Latinx children of immigrants in urban schools. Highlighting how insights gleaned from our respective ethnographic projects have led us to embrace more explicit commitments to participatory engagement, we consider how young people's perspectives can and should fundamentally shift…

Persistent educational inequity for immigrant and refugee students and their families calls for instructional practices centering on access, quality, and social justice. Drawing on two qualitative case studies, this article examines how three U.S. urban school teachers attended to the systemic inequalities and unique challenges confronting…

Immigration policies and deportations have negatively impacted not only undocumented immigrant students and their families, but also their teachers, administrators, counselors, and other community members. Drawing on Freire's (1970) concept of "praxis," and on critical-ecological educational approaches (da Silva Iddings, 2017), we…

School district decentralization typically shifts authority and resources from central office administrators at the district level to leaders at the school level. Although decentralization reforms have been prevalent in urban educational contexts for decades, they often yield poor results for low-income, minoritized communities. In this article,…

Funds of Knowledge (FK), Community Cultural Wealth (CCW), and Bourdieu's analysis of capital (BAC) have each been applied in powerful ways to address complex issues of urban education; however, the overlaps and tensions between them have been largely underexplored. When brought together, these three economic metaphors--funds, wealth,…

Diversity in cultures, languages and identities is a valuable resource in urban education. There is empirical evidence to support this assertion in the existing literature on "funds of knowledge" and "funds of identity." However, the main focus of such research is on the tacit knowledge, skills, and resources that students--and…

Using critical race structuralism (CRS), a new contribution, as well as primary and secondary data, this article explores the role of science in teaching social justice issues in urban education. In the United States, a teaching workforce, which is predominately White, middle class, and female, intersects with an increasingly diverse student…

This article presents a preliminary study of an urban school district, and its use of a scripted middle-school language arts and literacy curriculum. The majority of students served by this district are African American. By interviewing a small sample of four teachers and one literacy coach, gathering preliminary data, and observing students…

Few studies have examined the growing trend of teacher-legislators, specifically teachers' trajectory to elected office. Drawing on qualitative data and raced-gendered frameworks, this article examines how three female teachers of color in one Southwest state leveraged their teaching experiences to shape their policy priorities and how they…

Social studies has been lagging in the race to gain classroom instructional time due to the impact of high-stakes testing in urban schools. Furthermore, social studies can be particularly uninteresting to Black students whose diverse sociocultural histories and perspectives remain diminished or absent. Therefore, this paper advances curricular and…

The research reported on in this article investigates a question that continues to perplex educators: How might a carefully designed course that provides opportunities for changes in participants' learning and practices be used in the preparation of the next generation of scholars/practitioners as equity-minded agents of change? Data analyzed from…

This article relies on nonrepresentational narrative research to consider improvisational urban literacy. The author uses narrative to theorize the choice to teach "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" in urban high school English classrooms. The author positions this decision as the surprising result of an improvisational, urban literacy…

Upholding critical race theory (CRT)'s transdisciplinary approach to unveil the educational violence against Students of Color, we apply W.E.B. Du Bois's story of John from the chapter "Of the Coming of John" in "The Souls of Black Folk." In doing so, we expose the problematic ideological and practical structures used for the…