Clinical Partnerships in Urban Elementary School Settings: An Honest Celebration of the Messy Realities in the Preparation of Teachers

In Clinical Partnerships in Urban Elementary School Settings, early career scholars describe their work in a clinical partnership model in one large urban district partnering with teachers, children, families, and administrators making a commitment to not only educate children but also the development of elementary teachers. Topics include community-university relationships, deconstructing privilege and oppression, responsive collaboration, professional identity, and the ways teacher candidates position young children.

The chapter authors are early career scholars who have participated in ＂community-engaged scholarship＂ at a Research-Extensive institution of higher education. They seek to illuminate the importance of this scholarship in order to grow the academic repertoires of emerging scholars in their ideologically becoming as well as connect and elevate the ways in which community engagement is valued and disseminated in publishing.

Readers of this text will: (1) read stories of teacher educators working through the ＂messy reality＂ of engaging in clinical teaching work; (2) gain insight to the complexity of the relationships with community, university, and schools and the individuals who seek to establish and/or nurture equitable learning environments for students; and (3) understand the power of qualitative research as a tool for telling stories about this messy work as well as discuss the necessity in valuing such efforts among higher education.

Contributors are: Tammy R. Davis, Tim Foster, Lateefah Id-Deen, Ann Larson, Bianca Nightengale-Lee, Shannon Putman, Gabrielle Read-Jasnoff, Amy Shearer Lingo, Anetria Swanson, and Emily Zuccaro.

Mikkaka Overstreet, Ph.D. (2015), University of Louisville, is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at East Carolina University. Her research reflects work with preservice and practicing teachers to empower and engage students through culturally responsive education.

Lori Norton-Meier, Ph.D. (1998), University of Iowa, is a Professor of Literacy Education at the University of Louisville. She has published extensively about the power of teacher learning when given the opportunity to engage in the act of inquiry.