This book explores the stories of department chairs who led teacher-preparation programs framed around social justice and inclusivity. Smith-Gray develops a road map on how to effectively lead these programs that produce educators who educate and advocate for underserved students, their families and their communities.

Preparing and Sustaining Social Justice Educators spotlights the challenging and necessary work of fostering social justice in schools. Integral to this work are the teachers and school leaders who enact the principles of social justice—racial equity, cultural inclusivity, and identity acceptance—daily in their classrooms. This volume makes the case that high-quality public education relies on the recruitment, professional development, and retention of educators ready to navigate complex systemic and structural inequities to best serve vulnerable student populations. Annamarie Francois and Karen Hunter Quartz, along with contributing scholars and practitioners, present an intersectional approach to educational justice. The approach is grounded in research about deeper learning, community development, and school reform. Throughout the book, the contributors detail professional activities proven to sustain social justice educators. They show, for example, how effective teacher coaching encourages educators to confront their explicit and implicit biases, to engage in critical conversations and self-reflection, and to assess teacher performance through a social justice lens. The book illustrates how professional learning collaborations promote diverse, antiracist, and socially responsible learning communities. Case studies at three university-partnered K–12 schools in Los Angeles demonstrate the benefits of these professional alliances and practices. Francois and Quartz acknowledge the difficulty of the social justice educator’s task, a challenge heightened by a K–12 teacher shortage, an undersupplied teacher pipeline, and school closures. Yet they keep their sights set on a just and equitable future, and in this work, they give educators the tools to build such a future.

This book explores the stories of department chairs who led teacher-preparation programs framed around social justice and inclusivity. Smith-Gray develops a road map on how to effectively lead these programs that produce educators who educate and advocate for underserved students, their families and their communities.

Social justice language teacher education is a response to the acknowledgement that there are social/societal inequities that shape access to learning and educational achievement. In social justice language teacher education, social justice is the driving force and primary organizational device for the teacher education agenda. What does “social justice” mean in diverse global locations? What role does English play in promoting or denying equity? How can teachers come to see themselves as advocates for equal educational access and opportunity? This volume begins by articulating a view of social justice teacher education, followed by language teacher educators from 7 countries offering theorized accounts of their situated practices. Authors discuss powerful components of practice, and the challenges and tensions of doing this work within situated societal and institutional power structures.

Transforming Teacher Education for Social Justice offers teacher educators a new way to think about the development of culturally responsive educators. The authors identify the core components needed to restructure and reorient programs of teacher education to adequately prepare new teachers for the racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse communities they will serve upon graduation. They propose a new model of teacher preparation that capitalizes on the strengths of programs evidencing important outcomes. Chapters address the notion of situated learning embedded in communities; the need for extensive clinical experience in authentic teaching situations; strategies for interweaving theory, content, pedagogy, and classroom practice; the importance of student engagement and motivation; and the implementation of critical service learning. Key policy implications of this model are also discussed within the current landscape of teacher education reform. Book Features: A specific approach for realizing the promise of culturally responsive teaching. A flexible model for a community-engaged teacher preparation. Compelling data on student learning outcomes based on university/school/community collaboration as evidence of eliminating the achievement gap. “The most striking piece of this book is the descriptions and stories of how the community serves as mentors to the university faculty and students. The authors take readers with them through the many authentic activities led by the community mentors. We are left both with the desire to spend time with these remarkable community members ourselves and the desire to develop similar community-based programs.” —Jana Noel, California State University, Sacramento “Mandatory reading for teacher educators who are serious about preparing teachers for diverse schools and communities.” —Tyrone Howard, UCLA

The first of its kind, Teacher Education across Minority-Serving Institutions brings together innovative work from the family of institutions known as minority-serving institutions: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions. The book moves beyond a singular focus on teacher racial diversity that has characterized scholarship and policy work in this area. Instead, it pushes for scholars to consider that racial diversity in teacher education is not simply an end in itself but is, a means to accomplish other goals, such as developing justice-oriented and asset-based pedagogies.

In this selection of his work from 1991-2008, Zeichner examines the relationships between various aspects of teacher education, teacher development, and their contributions to the achievement of greater justice in schooling and in the broader society.