This book is motivated by our experiences in working with students and their families in urban communities. We are particularly concerned about the urgent imperative to address the endemic educational and societal challenges that pervade the lives of urban students, particularly those who live in poverty, are of minority and immigrant backgrounds, and are otherwise marginalized within the current educational discourses and practices. In spite of the fact that over the last 3 decades policy makers, educators and communities across the globe have called for in depth structural changes, this is rarely evidenced in the discourses, practices, and structures within academic and practitioner spheres. This reluctance, despite articulations to the contrary, can be directly linked to normative theoretical and practical perspectives that are defined by assumptions that constrain urban students within restrictive boundaries. These narrow outsider worldviews based on notions of what ought to be, combined with ignorance of the realties of students' lives focus on deviance and deficits. They blind prospective change agents to the strengths and richness that students bring, and they delimit the transformative potential of social justice praxis within urban environments. The resulting discourse, in the form of deficit beliefs, thoughts, actions, and dialogues shapes urban research, theory, and practice. We contend that in order to counteract the debilitating impacts of these harmful constructions of urban and social justice, it is important to clarify this terminology.
This book is motivated by our work with students and their families in urban communities, and the urgent imperative to address the endemic educational and societal inequities that pervade the lives of urban students, particularly those who live in poverty, are of minority and immigrant backgrounds, and are otherwise marginalized within current educational discourses and practices. In spite of the fact that over the last three decades policy makers, educators and communities across the globe have called for in-depth structural adjustments to urban education, these changes are rarely evidenced in the academic and practitioner spheres. On the contrary, guided by normative assumptions that ignore the realties of students' lives, narrow outsider notions of what ought to be continue to focus on deviance and constrain urban students within restrictive boundaries. These underlying discourses, in the form of deficit beliefs, thoughts, and actions, shape urban research, theory, and practice and blind prospective change agents to students' strengths, and delimit the transformative potential of social justice praxis within urban environments.
This volume brings together a range of scholars from Canada and the United States that present a variety of different lenses on issues of diversity, equity and social justice in urban schools. Their analyses highlight the richness and complexity of urban education, and illustrate how multiple theoretical and practical configurations of difference impact students, their families and communities, and facilitate or hinder the creation of inclusionary learning environments.
