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The Urban Review

, Volume 46, Issue 1, pp 63–85 | Cite as

Urban Pre-service K-6 Teachers’ Conceptions of Citizenship and Civic Education: Weighing the Risks and Rewards

  • Anand R. Marri
  • Sara Michael-Luna
  • Maria Scott Cormier
  • Patrick Keegan
Article
First Online:

Abstract

To effectively help urban pre-service teachers to provide civic education opportunities in their future classrooms, teacher educators should know how urban pre-service teachers themselves conceptualize citizenship and civic engagement. Through the research question—how do urban K-6 pre-service teachers currently enrolled in an urban education teacher certification program at a 4-year university construct key concepts and ideologies about citizenship and civic education?—we examined how 15 pre-service teachers understood these concepts. Using three conceptions of citizenship—personally responsible citizen, participatory citizen, and justice-oriented citizen (Westheimer and Kahne in Am Educ Res J 41(2):237–269, 2004)—our analysis demonstrated that urban pre-service teachers’ conceptions of their students’ lives significantly influenced their ideas about civic education in elementary schools. Although the participating pre-service teachers overwhelmingly promoted personally responsible citizenship, we found the participants to heavily weigh developmentally appropriate practice and classroom context when considering the risks and rewards of promoting justice-oriented citizenship in elementary classrooms.

Keywords

Urban teachers Civic education Citizenship Pre-service teachers 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Anand R. Marri
    • 1
  • Sara Michael-Luna
    • 2
  • Maria Scott Cormier
    • 3
  • Patrick Keegan
    • 4
  1. 1.Department of Arts and Humanities, Teachers CollegeColumbia UniversityNew YorkUSA
  2. 2.Department of Elementary and Early Childhood EducationQueens College, CUNYQueensUSA
  3. 3.Institute on Education & Economy, Community College Research CenterTeachers College, Columbia UniversityNew YorkUSA
  4. 4.Program in Social Studies, Teachers CollegeColumbia UniversityNew YorkUSA

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