A cause beyond ourselves

Abstract

The chapter introduces five early career teachers whose backgrounds and educational experiences draw them to teach in some of the most underserved urban communities in the United States. Among the many challenges of urban education are high rates of attrition among new teachers that limit students’ access to high-quality teaching. This precipitates a need to understand the views and experiences of our most promising new teachers who are oriented toward social equity. Their narratives, which appear in subsequent chapters, reveal their beliefs about teaching, their instructional practices, and their efforts to develop their students’ literacy capacities. Research on cultural responsiveness, social justice, and critical caring can inform an agenda for preparing and supporting early career teachers in urban and under-resourced schools. The chapter addresses these perspectives and provides research that shows how teachers acquire them over time and across activity settings. It also addresses the significance of teacher narrative as a form of inquiry, how teachers were selected for this project, and how their narrative writing evolved.