ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why urban teacher education should be understood as requiring the knowledge that parents and communities. It suggests the ways in which gender’s absence from the discourse and practice of urban school improvement has propelled teacher education toward a model of professionalism harmful to the respectful collaboration among teachers, families, and communities. The professional model obscures the ways that mothers and elementary teachers share social and gendered positions because of their relationship to children and their desire, to increase social recognition for their work with children. M. R. Grumet argues from a feminist perspective against the “false dichotomy” of home and classroom that has historically driven attempts to transform teaching into a profession like the archetypal professions, law and medicine. The sociocultural gaps between teachers and families that occur in many school systems are reinforced by urban schools’ insularity from the communities they are supposed to serve, an isolation intended to take politics out of education.
