Editors Petty, Good, and Putman offer a collection of academic and professional perspectives focused on empirical research and theoretical perspectives on educator preparation and various methods for enhancing the teaching process. They have organized the selections that make up the main body of the text in parts devoted to teacher preparation, teacher evaluation, alternative licensure programs, pedagogical training, pre-service teacher preparation and a wide variety of other related subjects.
– ProtoView Reviews
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Numbering 818 pages before the index, the book is as weighty as it is useful. The book contains 32 chapters broken up into four sections, including: Professional Development for Quality Teaching and Learning, Teacher Preparation and Professionalism, Preparing Teachers to Work with Diverse Populations, and Examining Outcomes of Teacher Preparation and Practice.
Chapter 22 is entitled “#UrbanLivesMatter: Empowering Learners through Transformative Teaching” and is especially salient. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, authors Nicole Webster of Penn State, Heather Coffey, and Nathan Ash, both of UNC-Charlotte, explore the best ways to educate teachers on how to put into place “transformative teaching” in order to close the achievement gap between urban and nonurban students. The chapter discusses the urgent need for culturally responsive teaching, multicultural education, and critical literacy. The authors make the important point that the lives of their students do not exist in a vacuum. It is ineffective to teach civics to urban students who feel unrepresented in their government, for example, if those students are not presented with strategies to gain political power and implement changes in the government. The theoretical may not work with all students, and illustrating the practical effects of policies, both good and bad, on urban communities will bring the point home in a way that simply reading from a book would not.
This handbook is a useful resource and covers a tremendous amount of material. Highly recommended for academic libraries.
– Sara Mofford, ARBA Reviews