Transforming Teacher Education for Social Justice

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 that is accessible to a variety of university and community settings.
• Compelling data on student learning outcomes based on university/school/community collaboration as evidence of eliminating the achievement gap.

Eva Zygmunt is an associate professor and Patricia Clark is a professor in the Department of Elementary Education at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.

"They model an authentic university-school-community partnership that is both sustainable and mutually beneficial for all stakeholders. This is a valuable contribution to a body of literature that often glosses over the complicated and tenuous relationships that frequently exist between universities and the local community."

—Teachers College Record

"This book is a comprehensive tome on how to prepare teachers to practice ethical caring in a rich relational and social context of their own making – to become community teachers in and for caring community schools."
—From the Foreword by Peter C. Murrell, Professor of Urban Education at Loyola University Maryland

"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

"Finally, a work that provides us with a model of what comprehensive and sustained community engagement looks like in teacher preparation. Zygmunt and Clark challenge all teacher educators to move beyond involvement to engagement and transformation. The book is mandatory reading for teacher educators who are serious about preparing teachers for diverse schools and communities."
—Tyrone Howard, professor of education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

2017 AACTE Outstanding Book Award