Preparing Teacher Candidates for Trauma-Informed Practices

Children who experience trauma may experience negative health and educational outcomes. Teachers are critical stakeholders in trauma-informed schools and are tasked with recognizing and responding to the needs of students who experience trauma. However, teachers face barriers to implementing trauma-informed practices, including high levels of stress and lack of preparation. This article describes training embedded in an urban teacher preparation program aimed at increasing the trauma knowledge and skills confidence of teacher candidates. Findings suggest the training helped teacher candidates increase knowledge and skills and met stated needs. Recommendations for future research and implications for teachers and teacher educators are discussed.

Down the Rabbit Hole: An Ethnodrama to Explore a Fantastical First Year of Teaching

Down the Rabbit Hole is an ethnodrama based on interviews with novice teachers teaching in historically underperforming and underresourced school districts. Each of the teachers interviewed completed a specialized program in urban teacher preparation. The main character in the play represents all of the teachers in the study and her dialogue is taken from the body of interview data. The dialogue from the other characters is also taken from the interviews and adapted to show the interactions described by the teachers. The script highlights the challenges of navigating the myriad of realities facing new teachers in high-needs contexts. This work begins with the full script and then includes a discussion of what the author learned and how this knowledge is being used to reshape her practice.

Student Teaching and Urban Educator Aptness: The Significance of Similar Sociocultural Scenarios

Drawing from the experiences and reflections of new urban educators, this study examines how teachers undergo their first year of teaching on account of their student teaching. Using Situated Learning Theory—with an emphasis on legitimate peripheral participation—this study explores how sociocultural and contextual elements of schools contribute to teacher development. Findings suggest that teachers who complete student teaching in environments that mirror their first-year school placements feel more confident and competent in their ability to teach and serve students than teachers who complete student teaching in environments that do not match their first-year school placements. Implications for urban teacher preparation and student teaching placement are discussed.

Haberman Star Teacher Interview as a predictor of success in urban teacher preparation

In urban schools, along with skills for effective teaching, successful teachers must also possess values and belief systems conducive to teaching effectively in diverse settings (Becker, Kennedy, & Hundersmarck, 2003; Haberman, 2008; Metzgar & Wu, 2008). As demonstrated in CAEP standard 3, there is a critical need for EPPs to admit candidates who have both the dispositions to be effective teachers in urban schools and the propensity for success within the preparation program. The Haberman Star Teacher Interview is a commercial teacher selection instrument designed for use in selecting teachers for urban schools. This study examines the validity of the instrument as a selection instrument for teacher preparation programs. The selection instrument was administered to 109 students before entry into an urban teacher preparation program at an urban university in the U.S. Midwest. Inter-rater agreement and principle components analysis provided evidence of reliability and structural validity of the multi-part Haberman scores. Logistic regression analyses supported the validity of using the Haberman scores to predict later program attrition, but not in the manner recommended by its developers. Within this paper, the authors recommend the cautious use of the instrument in urban teacher preparation. Application of scoring and program implications are discussed.

Breaking Down Barriers and Building Bridges: Transformative Practices in Community- and School-Based Urban Teacher Preparation

Attracting and retaining high-quality teachers is especially challenging in urban districts. It is in these communities where teacher candidates must begin their preparation. This article provides a conceptual framework and programmatic examples used to develop a community-based urban teacher preparation model within a third hybrid space where community scholars, school practitioners, and university faculty come together to create a “pipeline” of community-minded teachers committed to teaching in their communities. Bridging the gap between content-based preparation at universities and culturally situated pedagogical training within the very urban classrooms where teachers are likely to be hired results in teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy, agency, and confidence. In turn, this positively affects teacher persistence, resilience, and higher rates of retention over time.

Redesigned Urban Teacher Preparation

A redesigned teacher preparation program at a Midwestern public research university focuses on deconstructing the previous curriculum to enhance the ways in which pre-service teachers get early experiences in communities and schools that serve them. Concurrently, the new curriculum clusters content, pedagogy, and instructional technology so that such clinical/field experiences could be analyzed by means of reflective practice that is highly contextual and dialogic. Challenges, opportunities, and trends during the design and implementation process reveal connections to the most recent research on urban teacher preparation. Future research proposes areas of investigation related to sustainability of research-focused and evidence-driven urban teacher education that involves community partners as an integral part of the program implementation and evaluation.