Norming suburban

de Dyan Watson

In this qualitative study, I explore 17 novice teachers' beliefs about teaching in urban schools. I seek to understand the various ways in which teachers encode racial discourse by using the terms urban and suburban. Findings indicate that these teachers understand teaching in urban schools as difficult because they associate it with teaching deficit-laden students. These understandings were stated in contrast to how participants generally viewed suburban teaching and suburban students. Specifically, they used suburban students as the normative reference group to which urban students were negatively compared. This phenomenon of norming suburban explains how these teachers use suburban students and teaching as a lens through which they make sense of urban students and teaching. The teachers in this study normed suburban in three main steps: First they attributed behaviors, values, and beliefs to their students based on their urban-ness and suburban-ness. I refer to these perceived behaviors, values, and beliefs as cultural resources. Second, teachers assigned these cultural resources either a positive or negative value. Third, by juxtaposing one group against another, teachers set up hierarchies between suburban and urban students and families in which suburban is preferred. Thus the cultural and symbolic resources of suburban students and families become cultural and symbolic capital. For these teachers, urban and suburban are cultural constructs defined by race and class, and the perceived behaviors, beliefs, and values associated with each. This belief caused them to view urban teaching as teaching plus . For example, teaching plus classroom management, teaching plus differentiation, teaching plus dealing with kids' (negative) outside lives. The teachers in this study defined urban teaching as difficult, intensive, and harder than suburban teaching. As such, these views of urban teaching shaped where teachers sought teaching positions.

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