Toward Social Justice in Urban Education: A Model of Collaborative Cultural Inquiry in Urban Schools

The increasing racial, cultural, and ethnic diversity among the populations attending urban schools poses a significant challenge to providing quality public education. Similarly, few would dispute that, in order to meet this challenge effectively, teachers must acquire the cultural competency for creating productive and inclusive learning environments, building academic capability among all students, and forging solid relationships with students' families and communities. Though this view has become an "official doctrine" among teacher educators, developing cultural competence in actual contexts consisting of urban schools and classrooms has proven a difficult challenge. This article explains a design for this work called Circles of Co-Practice as a system of practice and inquiry to develop cultural competency in partnership activity. The system design and application to the work of urban school-university-neighborhood collaboratives to improve urban education is illustrated with two case instances.