Abstract
Urban teacher residency (UTR) has been promoted as a promising model to prepare teachers for urban schools. In this review, we analyzed 56 peer-reviewed, empirical journal articles on UTRs published between 2010 and 2020, following the PRISMA guidelines. While this literature suggested UTRs’ potentials to recruiting and retaining diverse urban school teachers, there was limited evidence showing UTRs’ impact on graduates’ classroom teaching and the learning of their students. We also identified varied degree of coursework-fieldwork alignment and uneven mentoring support across programs. We concluded with research implications and recommendations for teacher educators and policymakers to advance urban teacher education.
Keywords
Many urban school districts across the United States struggle to recruit and retain high-quality and culturally diverse teachers who are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for urban teaching (Hollins, 2012; Ingersoll, 2001). Urban teacher residency (UTR) has been proposed as a promising model to prepare and diversify teacher workforce for high-need urban districts (Berry et al., 2008). UTRs are modeled after the established medical residency, characterized by clinically rich learning experiences and integrated curriculum connecting coursework and fieldwork (Guha et al., 2016; Silva et al., 2014). Advocates argue that UTRs grounded in closer district-university partnerships prepare teacher candidates to meet the particular needs of urban schools (Berry et al., 2008), many of which serve communities disproportionately impacted by poverty and with higher shares of minoritized students (Gadsden & Dixon-Román, 2017; Milner, 2012). Since 2008, the federal Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) Grant Program has provided multiple rounds of funds for colleges and universities to establish and expand UTR programs in partnership with urban schools (*Gatti, 2019; Guha et al., 2016).
While the UTR model has gathered much policy and funding attention, research evidence about the benefits and impact of UTR programs on teacher learning and student performance remains inconclusive (Silva et al., 2014; Zeichner & Bier, 2015). The critical questions that beg clearer answers are: what has extant research identified as the unique opportunities and advantages afforded by UTR programs? And what are persistent challenges of preparing teachers through the UTR approach? We aim to address these questions in this review of literature.
What is “Urban” Education?
Despite the well-documented need for preparing teachers for urban schools, the term “urban education” is rarely defined in a clear and consistent way in the literature (Chou & Tozer, 2008; Milner, 2012; Welsh & Swain, 2020). While many definitions are linked to the location and population of the schools and surrounding areas, scholars have noted that “urban (education)” is frequently used as a code word for a series of deficit perspectives associated with racially and linguistically diverse populations who are impacted by poverty (Gadsden & Dixon-Román, 2017). These understandings tend to focus on the characteristics of urban school students and their families that allegedly cause their underperformance (Welsh & Swain, 2020) while underestimating inside and outside of school factors inequitably affecting student learning (Milner, 2012; Welsh & Swain, 2020).
Milner (2012) proposed a typology of urban education taking into considerations multiple aspects, including location, population size and density, student demographics, and resources inside and outside of schools. “Urban intensive” schools are those in major metropolitan areas with over one million populations. These schools typically experience disparities in teacher quality and infrastructure and inequitable access to financial resources. Their students are more likely to come from racially and linguistically diverse families impacted by poverty. “Urban emergent” schools are in large cities with fewer than one million people and lower population density, but share many of the similar conditions of urban intensive districts. “Urban characteristic” schools are often located in smaller cities or even rural and suburban areas that would otherwise not be considered urban, yet experiencing demographic shifts and characteristics associated with urban contexts, such as the increase of English language learners (Milner, 2012). This conceptualization helps to reveal the dynamics and great variations among the so-called “urban education” settings and encourages teachers and teacher educators to pay more attention to the structural inequities that contribute to the disparities in learning opportunities, environments, and outcomes of students in urban districts (Welsh & Swain, 2020).
Teacher Education for Urban Schools
Historically, most teachers in the United States are prepared by college- and university-based programs where preservice teachers complete an undergraduate or graduate level education with some field experiences before they are certified as teachers (Fraser, 2007). The fast track, early entry pathways to certification allow teacher candidates to complete much of the preparation after entering the classroom and taking full responsibility as teachers of record (Zeichner & Bier, 2015). Both approaches, however, have been criticized for incoherence between university coursework and clinical learning and inadequate collaboration among university faculty, district and school educators, and community partners in teacher learning (Grossman et al., 2008; Zeichner & Bier, 2015).
Moreover, many programs struggle to prepare teachers to work in urban schools and meet the complex needs of students in culturally rich urban communities (Gadsden & Dixon-Román, 2017; Milner & Lomotey, 2021). Scholars have argued that teaching in urban schools requires a particular set of dispositions, knowledge, attitudes, and practices (Hollins, 2012; Milner & Lomotey, 2021). Urban districts also experience difficulty in attracting and maintaining high-quality teachers due to inequitable school funding structures and uneven distribution of resources (Adamson & Darling-Hammond, 2012), resulting in higher percentage of novice teachers leaving urban districts (Chou & Tozer, 2008; Ingersoll, 2001).
The Urban Teacher Residency Model
The UTR model has thus been proposed as a “third way” (Berry et al., 2008) to address the challenges of urban teacher preparation. UTRs are notable for closer district-university partnerships that offer clinically rich preparation situated in specific urban school contexts. Teacher candidates, called “residents,” are strategically recruited to meet the particular needs of partner urban districts and tend to be more diverse than those in university-based and alternative pathways (Guha et al., 2016). Residents teach under the tutelage of a mentor teacher in an urban classroom for one year, while simultaneously completing coursework that is closely connected to classroom apprenticeship and other clinical experiences (Berry et al., 2008; Silva et al., 2014). Because residents are recruited and prepared for the specific districts they are to teach, they are more likely to be effective and retained longer in urban schools (Berry et al., 2008; Silva et al., 2014).
UTRs first appeared in metropolitan areas in the U.S., including Chicago, Boston, and Denver, that would fall under Milner’s (2012) urban intensive and emergent categories. While UTRs necessarily vary in their design specifics in response to different urban contexts (Hammerness et al., 2016), they share some common principles and components. In this review, we identify the following characteristics of UTRs synthesized from existing review studies of UTRs (Berry et al., 2008; Guha et al., 2016; Klein et al., 2013; Silva et al., 2014): (a) collaborative partnerships among urban school districts, teacher education programs, and/or educational or community organizations; (b) year-long classroom teaching alongside a mentor teacher; (c) integrated curriculum connecting coursework and fieldwork; (d) graduate level program leading to a teaching certificate and masters’ degree; (e) strategic recruitment and selection of residents; (f) ongoing mentoring and induction support; and (g) financial incentives and job opportunities in exchange for residents’ committed service in urban schools. While not all of these features are unique to the UTR model, the first three set UTRs apart from many university-based programs and fast track, early entry pathways to teaching (Guha et al., 2016).
Method
In this section, we explained the procedures and strategies used to search and examine articles for review, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and data analysis process. We also discussed limitations of our approach.
Data Collection Procedures
We conducted a systematic search on a number of databases, ERIC, EBSCO, and JSTOR, for peer-reviewed journal articles. The search was performed using the key word “urban teacher residency” and its variants: “teacher residency” “teaching residency” “residency” “teacher resident” “resident teacher” and “urban teacher education.” The decision of including only peer-reviewed journal articles, or “traditional literature” (Alexander, 2020), focused the review on studies that were considered as significant and high-quality by peer reviewers and likely to be in wider circulation within the research community.
We developed the following inclusion criteria to select articles for analysis: (a) published in English between 2001 and 2020; (b) situated in an UTR(s) in the United States and focused its analysis on the program; and (c) empirical with systematic data collection and analysis using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods approaches. We limited the review to studies published between 2001 and 2020 because UTRs first appeared in the U.S. around early 2000s and the period ended with the fully published archive of articles by 2020. Our initial search yielded 1372 articles published during this time frame, from which 358 duplicates and 807 non-peer-reviewed publications were removed.
We scanned titles and Abstracts of the remaining 207 articles for initial screening and read the program descriptions to determine if they met the UTR characteristics and inclusion criteria outlined above. For example, we removed programs that were situated in non-school settings and undergraduate programs using residency for student teaching. We also removed studies that took place in non-U.S. settings in order to maintain contextual consistency. 73 articles were further assessed to determine if they were empirical in nature. Articles that did not engage in systematic data collection, analysis, and reporting, e.g., conceptual inquiries or reflection papers, were eliminated from the sample. At this point, 52 articles were found to meet the inclusion criteria for review.
We further examined the references of the identified articles and conducted a researcher checking by looking up the publication record of each author to determine if any additional work should be included (Alexander, 2020) by searching directly within the databases and by visiting the authors’ institutional webpages and academic social networking sites (Google Scholar, Academia, and ResearchGate), when available. Articles that did not report empirical studies yet contained data-based information about UTR programs, for example, Klein et al. (2013) and Solomon (2009), though excluded for review, were examined to identify additional articles. Similarly, research reports published by educational organizations or agencies and received wide circulation, such as those by The Aspen Institute and the Center for Teaching Quality (Berry et al., 2008), Institute of Education Sciences (Silva et al., 2014), and Learning Policy Institute (Guha et al., 2016), were read for referential backtracking purposes (Alexander, 2020). We added four additional articles after this process. Ultimately, we identified 56 empirical, peer-reviewed journal articles for this review. An overview of the article identification and selection process is provided in Figure 1.
Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) chart of article selection process.
Data Analysis
Our reading of the articles was guided by the two research questions, that is, what has this body of empirical literature identified as unique opportunities of the UTR model? and what are enduring challenges manifested from this literature? We first recorded key information of each article, including descriptions of the UTR program(s), issues investigated, populations of interest, research methods, and findings. We each used an Excel spreadsheet to inductively code the studies and revised initial open codes in an iterative way as we progressively read the articles (Miles et al., 2019). We met online each week to compare our analysis and discuss our coding decisions and rationale, and made iterative adjustments upon mutual agreement. The modified list of codes was recorded in a separate document and used for the subsequent week's coding, adopting a method similar to the constant comparative strategy (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). We used this strategy to cross-check our coding on an ongoing basis and to ensure that we remained consistent in our analysis while being alert to potential discrepancies (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Miles et al., 2019).
As the evolving coding list became stable, four weeks into the coding process, we used the finalized codes for the remaining articles and re-coded previously coded articles to ensure consistency. We met and compared our results after completing our independent data analysis and resolved minor variation. At this point, we merged our respective spreadsheets into a single file, which was manipulated to capture the overall patterns and trends within this literature. We wrote analytic memos and reflective notes throughout the data analysis process to keep an ongoing record of recurring themes and our preliminary interpretations; and to document our deliberation and decision-making process (Miles et al., 2019).
Limitations
Several limitations of this study need to be acknowledged. The decision to analyze only peer-reviewed journal articles excluded other types of publications, such as theses and dissertations, book chapters, and presentations, that might contain valuable information of UTRs. We also acknowledge that excluding non-empirical articles may have further limited our understandings about UTRs. We recognize the unique contributions of these scholarships and consulted a number of widely cited research reports and synthesis studies, explained above, to help contextualize and frame our review. Finally, we used an a priori list of features of UTRs to determine a study's eligibility to be included for review. We identified these characteristics by critically examining well-cited publications for the purposes of analytic clarify and consistency while acknowledging that specific program designs may differ across programs.
Findings
In this section, we first presented an overview of trends identified from the reviewed articles. We then detailed substantive findings of our review around cluster of issues examined and themes emerged from this UTR literature.
Patterns and Trends of UTR Research
The earliest peer-reviewed UTR article included in this review was published in 2010. The number of articles remained low from 2010 to 2013 with no more than two articles each year. The number gradually grew to seven in 2015 and maintained relatively stable between 2015 to 2020 1 with five to seven articles each year, with the year of 2016 being an exception at the number of 12. Considering the time needed to conduct research and for peer-review and publication, it is reasonable to posit from this trend an increased interest in the UTR model since the second decade of the 21st century. It is possible that the 2008 TQP grant provided necessary policy and financial support for UTR programs and researchers.
Program contexts
The majority of the studies included information about the location, size, and student demographic composition of the districts where the UTRs were located. More than half of the articles (n = 29) reported UTRs in the East Coast, followed by California and Midwestern states (n = 7 each) and the Southwest (n = 6). This sample included some of the largest, urban intensive and emergent districts (Milner, 2012) in the U.S., such as Boston (n = 2), Chicago (n = 7), Los Angeles (n = 3), New York City (n = 9), and San Francisco (n = 2). The UTR in one study partnered with urban (more than 70%), rural, and suburban schools.
Grade levels and subject areas
This literature reported UTRs that prepared teachers across grade levels: four studies focused exclusively on elementary and early childhood education, while the majority had secondary (n = 28) or both elementary and secondary programs (n = 13). Another 11 studies did not specify the grade level. Subject areas most frequently represented in this sample were sciences (n = 23), mathematics (n = 18), English (n = 8), and social studies (n = 6). In addition, studies reported UTR programs that prepared teachers for students with special needs (n = 23) and English language learners (ELLs, n = 13).
Populations of interest
44 of the 56 reviewed articles studied current residents and/or UTR graduates: 30 articles focused exclusively on current residents, 10 UTR graduates, and four had both current residents and graduates as their participants. 14 of these 44 articles included additional UTR stakeholders as participants, among which the most were university faculty (n = 10) and mentor teachers (n = 9). Overall, mentor teachers and university faculty were studied as participants in 16 articles each. Other UTR stakeholders, including university supervisors, instructional/induction coaches, and school district and university administrators, were collectively studied in 14 articles, always along with residents and graduates, mentor teachers, and/or university faculty.
Research areas
In accord with the focal populations, much of this literature investigated the learning and teaching experiences of current residents and UTR graduates in relation to the curricular (n = 7) and pedagogical (n = 5) considerations of the program. Other UTR aspects examined included resident recruitment (n = 6), induction (n = 4), and retention (n = 2). The mentoring experiences and relationships between residents and mentor teachers were the focus of ten studies. Additionally, 12 studies examined the coherence, or lack of such, between UTR curriculum and classroom teaching and the challenges to collaborate across school and university settings.
14 studies investigated the impact of UTR learning on residents and graduates’ teaching beliefs and practices. Eight studies focused on how the UTR learning influenced residents and graduates’ identities and practices towards teaching for equity, inclusion, and social justice. One study examined the relative effectiveness of UTR graduates compared to novice teachers in the same district.
Methodologies
The majority of the studies (n = 46) used qualitative methods, drawing on data collected from individual and focus group interviews, observation, open-ended surveys, and documents and artifacts (e.g., syllabi, essays, reflection journals, and discussion posts). Qualitative case study was the most frequently used design (n = 14), followed by (auto)ethnographic studies (n = 3) and narrative inquiries (n = 2). Three studies adopted quantitative research methods using administrative data, assessment scores, or survey; and seven employed mixed methods.
The UTR Approach to Preparing Teachers
We organized the substantive findings using the headings below that illustrated the most frequently investigated UTR features and themes emerged from the reviewed articles. It was not uncommon that a single study covered more than one aspect of the program and/or included multiple stakeholder groups in its analysis. Therefore, we presented these findings not as if they were separate domains functioning in isolation but rather as interconnected stakeholders and intersecting components of the UTRs.
Resident recruitment and selection
The UTR model has been advocated for its potentials to recruiting racially and linguistically diverse teachers and career changers into teaching in high-need urban schools and content areas (Berry et al., 2008; Silva et al., 2014). Several studies in our review supported this claim (*Garza et al., 2013; *Lee et al., 2019; *Papay et al., 2012; Vernikoff et al., 2022). For example, *Papay et al. (2012) found that the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR) was more likely to draw non-White teachers. In two related articles, Garza and colleagues (*Garza et al., 2013; *Garza & Werner, 2014) found that their program was promising in recruiting ethnically diverse, secondary mathematics and science teachers for high-need urban schools. The program in *Lee et al. (2019) study also had a targeted recruitment strategy for culturally and racially diverse candidates, with 42% of its graduates being teachers of color across four cohorts. Both *Garza et al. (2013) and *Lee et al. (2019), however, noted uneven distribution of diverse residents across cohorts.
A few researchers described how residents were selected into their UTR programs (*Beck, 2020b; *Garza & Werner, 2014; *Lee et al., 2019; *Marshall & Scott, 2015). For example, *Marshall and Scott (2015) analyzed admission data and found that residents’ performance on teaching demonstration and individual interview were most closely related to their chance of admission. Additionally, candidates displayed such dispositions as being flexible and open to feedback, active engagement, and high expectations for urban school students were likely to be selected (*Marshall & Scott, 2015). Similarly, *Lee et al. (2019) retrospectively reviewed graduates’ admission essays and found that candidates who wanted to become transformative change agents and advocates for urban school students were likely to get admitted to—and successfully complete—the UTR program.
Other researchers noted that the UTRs they studied had a strong emphasis on social justice and consequently attracted candidates who were oriented towards teaching for social justice, diversity, and inclusion (*Beck, 2020b; *Reagan et al., 2016) or committed to teaching in urban districts (*Gatti, 2019; Vernikoff et al., 2022). For instance, *Vernikoff et al. (2022) found that residents who attended urban schools themselves were likely to be drawn to the UTR program and brought with them unique place-based funds of knowledge about the urban contexts. Prospective residents in *Beck’s (2020b) study also needed to demonstrate their commitment to education for equity and social justice through a two-day performance-based selection process comprised of mini-lesson teaching, interview, and individual and group activities.
UTR curriculum design and implementation
A key aspect of the UTR model is the integrated curriculum connecting coursework and fieldwork (Guha et al., 2016). Studies described the ways in which university faculty and school-based educators—typically mentor teachers—worked together in UTR curriculum development, most commonly by engaging mentor teachers in course design and immersing university faculty into the school sites (*Gardiner & Lorch, 2015; *Garza et al., 2013; *Klein et al., 2016). For instance, *Gardiner and Salmon (2014) reported two initiatives to strengthen the UTR curricular coherence by situating university faculty as liaisons and research residents in partner schools to observe, evaluate, and provide feedback to residents. They also collaborated with mentors to help the residents connect university learning with classroom teaching expectations (*Gardiner & Lorch, 2015). Faculty members also conducted action research to help address challenges reported by residents and redesigned courses to improve theory-practice integration (*Gardiner & Salmon, 2014). Klein and colleagues similarly reported the impact of action research projects co-facilitated by mentor teachers and university faculty on residents’ development as critically reflective teacher-inquirers (*Klein et al., 2016) and mentors as teacher educators and teacher leaders (*Klein et al., 2015).
Studies also examined challenges facing teacher educators in collaborating in the UTR implementation, mostly due to conflicting institutional expectations and practices (*Anderson-Levitt et al., 2017; *Beck, 2016; *Taylor et al., 2014). For example, *Taylor et al. (2014) reflected on their navigation of a series of tensions in creating an UTR curriculum, including establishing authentic professional relationships with school educators, negotiating reciprocal authority in knowledge construction, and developing collaborative agency. University faculty and staff participated in *Beck’s (2016) study reported confusion and frustration about duplicated curricular content caused by inconsistent communication across institutions due to the increased number of stakeholders involved in the UTR curriculum design and implementation process.
In addition, redesigning curriculum for UTR also faced logistic difficulties because teacher education programs are bounded by an array of institutional policies about credit hours, course scheduling, faculty workload, and degree requirements, as well as accreditation regulations and state policies for certifications (*Beck, 2016; *Garza et al., 2013; *Garza & Werner, 2014; *Williamson & Hodder, 2015). In a series of studies, Garza and colleagues detailed their struggles to design a curriculum that simultaneously met the UTR expectations and university admission and coursework requirements while not overwhelming the residents (*Garza et al., 2013; *Garza & Werner, 2014). *Mattheis et al. (2020) similarly reported challenges in preparing social justice-oriented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers while meeting state teacher licensure regulations.
Another area of research foregrounded the significance of contexts in UTR curriculum. *Matsko and Hammerness (2014) delineated a context-specific approach in their analysis of the University of Chicago’s Urban Teacher Education Program (UChicago UTEP). They explained how the program focused on preparing residents to learn about the content embedded in the overlapping contexts consisting of the federal and state education policies, discourses surrounding the U.S. public education, the geographical and socio-cultural contexts, and the specific contexts of the classroom and students in Chicago public schools. *Williamson et al. (2016) similarly described how the San Francisco Teacher Residency (SFTR) curriculum engaged residents to examine the layers of contexts and helped them develop context-conscious mindsets and asset-based knowledge for teaching in San Francisco schools. Residents in *Hammerness and Craig’s (2016) study identified the needs to learn more about the neighborhoods and cultural resources available to their students in New York City schools. Informed by the study results, the researchers collaborated with school and community partners and developed a year-long course addressing key aspects of the local contexts with such activities as case studies of students, community walk, and “school culture observation” (*Hammerness & Craig, 2016). The Community Project in *Beck’s (2016) study was another example of a contextualized curriculum that university faculty co-developed with district stakeholders to foster residents’ understandings of the Lewistown community where the UTR was located.
Residency teaching experiences
One of the defining characteristics of the UTR model is the year-long classroom apprenticeship (Guha et al., 2016). Residents in the reviewed articles were found in favor of the intensive, clinically rich learning afforded by the year-long teaching (*Garza et al., 2014; *Garza & Werner, 2014; *Reynolds et al., 2016). For instance, *Reynolds et al. (2016) reported that residents attributed their growth in self-efficacy and confidence about teaching knowledge and skills over the year to the increased clinical experiences. Residents in Garza and colleagues’ (2014) study also believed that spending an entire year in a classroom allowed them to learn a variety of instructional strategies and experience different aspects of the teaching profession.
Similarly, university faculty, mentor teachers, and school and district administrators found the extended time spent in classroom better prepared residents to understand the complexities of teaching in urban schools and the particular needs of the district they were to teach (*Beck, 2016; *Gardiner, 2011a; *Garza et al., 2018). Faculty and staff participants in *Beck’s (2016) study, for example, believed that the clinically rich residency teaching provided residents opportunities to develop knowledge and skills necessary for effective urban teaching and experiment with innovative strategies in authentic classroom settings. Mentor teachers also believed that the year-long apprenticeship allowed residents to participate in-depth in school activities, explore different teaching strategies, and refine their practices (*Gardiner, 2011a).
Co-teaching was a common approach for UTRs to structure residency teaching, where residents taught along with their mentors and shared responsibilities for instruction, classroom management, and assessment (*Goodwin et al., 2016; *Reynolds et al., 2016; *Ricci et al., 2019a; *Ricci et al., 2019b). Residents in Goodwin and colleagues’ (2016) study started the residency year as observers, imitating their mentors’ practices, and moved to leading roles as independent teachers towards the end. *Ricci et al. (2019b) found that residents felt confident about their co-teaching with their mentors and believed that co-teaching benefited both their learning about teaching and the learning of their students. However, residents and mentors felt that designated time for planning was lacking and support for co-teaching methods inconsistent (*Ricci et al., 2019a; *Ricci et al., 2019b). Other studies (*Garza et al., 2014; *Goodwin et al., 2016; *Roegman et al., 2016b) identified similar needs for professional preparation and ongoing support for co-teaching, co-planning, and co-debriefing.
One dilemma of intense immersion in one school or classroom for an entire year was that while residents were well prepared for the specific school contexts, they might have limited access to other urban teaching settings, even within the same district (*Williamson et al., 2016). Instructional rounds, modeled after the medical rounds (*Reagan et al., 2017), were thus adopted by some UTR programs to facilitate residents’ access to multiple neighborhoods in large urban districts and to a range of school settings and instructional practices within the districts (*Reagan et al., 2017; *Williamson et al., 2016; *Williamson & Hodder, 2015). In a series of studies, Reagan and colleagues documented how hosting education rounds and observing and analyzing their peers’ teaching rounds helped residents develop a broader understanding of urban teaching and contextualize learning theories and instructional strategies across settings (*Reagan et al., 2015; *Reagan et al., 2017).
Residents also experienced pedagogical conflicts between what practiced in the school sites and what they learned from university coursework (*Anderson-Levitt et al., 2017; *Garza et al., 2013; *Naraian & Schlessinger, 2017; *Rood & Ashby, 2017). For example, *Rood and Ashby (2017) reported how residents negotiated tensions when enacting identities and practices as inclusive educators in non-inclusive teaching sites due to the underlying disagreement between university and school in terms of what counted as “effective teaching.” Participants in this study were able to tactically broker some of the inclusive concepts and practices in their teaching while learning to navigate the limiting conditions. *Anderson-Levitt et al. (2017) also noted that while residents in their study encountered pedagogical conflicts during residency teaching, they were able to learn from the dissonance and create their own personalized, coherent teaching practices. They did so by critically analyzing and selectively adopting what they learned from university courses and school practices and by drawing resources from their own experiences and identities. Residents in *Naraian and Schlessinger’s (2017) study similarly reported that some of the instructional practices of their colleagues at schools were at odds with their beliefs in equity and inclusive pedagogy. The authors thus called for programs to prepare residents to negotiate instructional tensions and develop adaptive practices.
Mentoring practices and relationships
This literature reported the important roles mentor teachers played in UTRs as school-based teacher educators who supported residents’ learning about teaching by modeling teaching practices and standards and by bridging between theoretical knowledge and classroom teaching (*Gardiner, 2011a; *Garza & Harter, 2016; *Goodwin et al., 2016; *Roegman et al., 2016b). For instance, mentor participants in Roegman and colleagues’ (2016) study created opportunities for residents to observe teaching practices and school events and explained technical aspects of teaching and school procedures to their residents. Residents in *Garza and Harter’s (2016) study reported that teaching along with mentor teachers allowed them to observe theory in practice with respect to lesson planning and instruction, classroom management, and building relationships with students. *Kolman et al. (2017) explained how mentor teachers demonstrated what they called “learner-centered mentoring” by modeling teaching practices based on their understandings of residents’ learning needs and their progression in learning about teaching.
Mentor teachers also helped residents to understand the contexts of the school in which they were expected to teach and facilitated their transition to the teaching profession (*Gardiner, 2011a; *Garza et al., 2014; *Roegman et al., 2016b) by offering the much-needed social and emotional support, resulting in relationships that often went beyond the residency year (*Goodwin et al., 2016; *Kolman et al., 2017; *Marshall et al., 2020). For instance, mentor teachers in Goodwin and colleagues’ (2016) study overwhelmingly mentioned providing emotional support by “acknowledging and celebrating residents’ professional growth” (p. 1209) in their self-assessment. *Marshall et al. (2020) additionally found that the professional relationships residents developed with their mentors influenced not only their learning in the UTR but also their long-term commitment to teaching in urban schools afterwards.
Unsurprisingly, not all mentoring experiences and relationships were positive or productive, in particular when residents felt that their mentors’ practices and expectations were not aligned with their own beliefs or what they learned from the university (*Naraian & Schlessinger, 2017; *Ricci et al., 2019a); or when the mentor teachers were perceived as reluctant to allow the residents to experiment with instructional activities, thus limiting their learning opportunities (*Gardiner, 2011a; *Garza & Harter, 2016; *Garza & Werner, 2014; *Goodwin et al., 2016). For instance, some residents in *Garza and Werner’s (2014) study were critical about their mentors’ attitudes and practices with regards to pedagogies, classroom management, and professionalism that they believed negatively influenced their residency experiences and growth as teachers. In a related study, residents reported few opportunities for classroom observations and collaborative planning with their mentors (*Garza & Harter, 2016). From mentor teachers’ perspectives, *Goodwin et al. (2016) found that they often struggled to find time to reflect and plan with residents, leading to missed opportunities to explicate their thinking about particular pedagogical moves. The pressure placed on high-stakes testing and teacher effectiveness measures also made it challenging for mentor teachers to share teaching responsibilities with the residents or take the risk to give them opportunities to try out innovative ideas. As a result, their mentoring tended to focus on the procedural and technical aspects of teaching and on helping the residents to replicate the ways they taught (*Goodwin et al., 2016).
Therefore, researchers called for greater attention to explicit mentor identification criteria and coherent mentor preparation framework in UTR programs, especially training on the learning needs of adult learners (*Garza & Harter, 2016; *Kolman et al., 2017) and professional development on collective inquiry and educative mentoring (*Goodwin et al., 2016; *Kolman et al., 2016; *Roegman et al., 2016b). In addition, the mentoring relationships were found to be most productive when mentor teachers were flexible and willing to share authority in the classroom, treat residents as co-teachers—as opposed to student teachers, and create space for residents to make mistakes and explore their own teaching styles (*Garza et al., 2018; *Kolman et al., 2017; *Marshall et al., 2020). *Roegman et al. (2017) further highlighted the importance for mentor teachers and university faculty to negotiate shared responsibilities as teacher educators and co-construct mentoring standards and guidelines in order to establish common understandings and improve collaboration in mentoring. This last point was echoed by several other reviewed studies, where a distributed approach to mentoring involving other residency stakeholders was adopted (*Gardiner & Salmon, 2014; *Leon, 2014; *Lillo, 2018). For instance, both *Leon (2014) and *Lillo (2018) illustrated how expert mentors and peer mentors could each contribute unique instructional knowledge and strategies, scholarly resources, and peer support that jointly fostered residents’ learning about teaching in urban schools.
UTRs for cultural diversity, inclusion, and social justice
Several researchers centered their analyses on how UTR learning prepared residents to become culturally responsive and/or inclusive educators who were committed to equity and social justice in urban schools. For example, *Reagan et al. (2016) found that while residents entered the program with some ideas of teaching for social justice, they continued exploring and enriching their articulations and demonstrated a strong commitment to teaching for social justice upon completing the program. Residents also adopted discourses and tools that were aligned with the UTR's stance on social justice, which the authors attributed to the combined influences of the coursework, classroom teaching, and supervision and mentorship (*Reagan et al., 2016). *Williamson et al. (2016) reported how residents learned to embrace the dynamic urban contexts as assets for teaching by rejecting deficit perspectives associated with urban school students and deconstructing structural inequities affecting urban communities. *Vernikoff et al. (2022) similarly illustrated the ways in which residents who had attended urban schools drew from their funds of knowledge to frame their understandings of urban education and create opportunities to enhance student learning, including viewing cultural diversity as educational asset, connecting with students through place-based pedagogical resources, and utilizing knowledge about the socio-political and bureaucratic structures to locate opportunities otherwise inaccessible to their students.
Researchers also explored cultivating residents’ identities and practices as inclusive educators through UTR coursework and field experiences. For instance, *Rood and Ashby (2017) documented how learning in the UTR fostered residents’ emerging identities as inclusive educators and helped them to challenge the dominant, limiting discourses about disabilities and implement inclusive strategies within restrictive environments. Similarly, *Naraian and Schlessinger (2017) described the evolving process through which residents developed as inclusive educators for social justice by enacting a social model of disability in their teaching. In two related studies, Ricci and colleagues explored how secondary mathematics and science residents used co-teaching with their mentors to differentiate instruction and reported improved sense of competence about teaching students with and without special learning needs (*Ricci et al., 2019a; *Ricci et al., 2019b).
Another thread of studies examined teacher educators’ understandings and practices of teaching for social justice in UTRs. For example, *Mattheis et al. (2020) analyzed the syllabi in an UTR that aimed to prepare diverse STEM teachers for urban schools and identified a lack of shared understandings of social justice in STEM teaching among the faculty. *Beck (2020b) also found that while faculty and staff in an UTR shared a commitment to the program's social justice mission, they had varied understandings of what social justice teacher education meant and adopted different approaches to integrating social justice in their curriculum and instruction. *Roegman et al. (2021) reflected on the challenges they encountered as university faculty when collaborating with school partners to prepare residents to implement social justice-oriented practices. *Gardiner (2011a) additionally highlighted the roles mentor teachers played as part of the systematic change towards socially just urban teacher education.
UTR graduate induction and retention
Information about the induction and retention of teachers who were UTR graduates was reported by six of the reviewed articles, consistent with the overall fewer number of studies on this group. *Gardiner (2011b, 2012) examined the induction component of an UTR program where all graduates received a two-year, mentored induction once they became teachers of record. The situated induction facilitated novice teachers’ transition into and continuous growth in urban classrooms and improved their student-centered instruction, which the author attributed to the sustained collaboration, trusting relationships, and commitment from both novice teachers and their induction coaches (*Gardiner, 2011b, 2012). Similarly, graduates in Roegman and colleagues’ (2021) study had the option to receive formal mentoring and induction for two years and informal support thereafter. *Hammerness and Matsko (2013) explained the three-year induction component that was designed as a formalized extension of the UChicago UTEP where each graduate was paired with an induction coach. In addition to individualized coaching, graduates participated in small-group meetings facilitated by the coaches, UTEP staff, and alumni to discuss shared concerns and remain connected with the UTEP community. The authors contended that these induction activities helped make universal teaching skills and practices contextually relevant to the specific Chicago public schools, students, and their communities (*Hammerness & Matsko, 2013). While not the focus of their analysis, *Klein et al. (2016) also highlighted the importance of receiving ongoing induction support for novice teachers’ development as reflective educators and teacher-inquirers.
Almost all UTRs in the reviewed studies had some incentives, or penalties, in place to encourage graduates to commit a minimum amount of time—typically three years— to teaching in the partner districts and had shown promising retention results beyond the requirement. For example, *Papay et al. (2012) found that not only did the retention rate for BTR graduates not drop abruptly after the three-year commitment, but also compared favorably (75%) to that of novice teachers in Boston and nationwide (51%) by the fifth year. *Roegman et al. (2017) examined both numerical retention, percentage of graduates who stayed in teaching, and conceptual retention, teaching practices reflecting concepts and principles learned from the residency. The researchers found that, in the fifth year, 85% of the graduates were still teaching—with 70% in the partner urban district—and that the core aspects of the residency curriculum and framework remained salient in graduates’ articulations of their practices (*Roegman et al., 2017). These numerical retention rates were comparable to data reported in other studies in this sample (*Garza & Werner, 2014; *Klein et al., 2016).
UTR impact on resident teaching beliefs and practices
Residents and graduates in the reviewed studies generally reported positive learning experiences in the UTRs, noting improved knowledge and skills about teaching and increased sense of confidence and preparedness as teachers. For instance, Klein and colleagues (*Klein et al., 2015; *Klein et al., 2016) found that UTR learning cultivated residents’ identity development as student-centered teacher-inquirers and supported their active knowledge construction as agents of their own learning about teaching. *Anderson-Levitt et al. (2017) found that residents constructed coherent understandings of teaching and professional identities despite experiencing conceptual and structural dissonance. In another study, residents reported the impact of residency learning on their increased confidence of teaching effectiveness (*Reynolds et al., 2016).
*Strom (2015) examined the complex relationships between UTR graduates’ teaching practices and their preparation. The author illustrated how an UTR graduate's negotiation and construction of teaching practices were collectively shaped by his interactions with the school conditions, the subject areas, and the students, in addition to his UTR learning. In two related studies, the researchers further explored how first-year teachers’ enactment of inquiry-based, social justice-oriented pedagogy learned from the UTR was conditioned by the complex school and classroom contexts (*Strom & Martin, 2016; *Strom et al., 2018). From the perspective of conceptual retention, *Roegman et al. (2017) found that residency graduates, after five years of teaching, still made connections to the program's framework and stances on curriculum, social justice, and inquiry when framing their teaching practices, which suggested continued impact of residency learning.
The study by *Papay et al. (2012) was the only one in this sample that directly analyzed the value-added performance scores of BTR graduates compared with those of novice teachers in the Boston Public Schools prepared through other pathways. The authors found that while BTR graduates were initially no more effective in English and outperformed by non-BTR-prepared novices in mathematics measured by student test scores, their effectiveness improved at a more rapid rate and was projected to outperform veteran teachers by the fifth year. Therefore, combined with BTR graduates’ higher retention rate (75% compared to 51%), these researchers posited that BTR-prepared teachers were likely to be more effective in improving student performance in the long run (*Papay et al., 2012).
Discussion
Our analysis of empirical, peer-reviewed journal articles on UTRs identified initial evidence showing that UTRs may help to recruit and retain a diverse pool of equity-oriented teachers who were committed to and knowledgeable about urban schools and communities. However, we found limited research documenting UTR graduates’ classroom teaching effectiveness and their impact on student performance. The quality of mentoring support and the degree of alignment between coursework and fieldwork also varied within and across programs. We discussed these findings below.
Our review showed UTRs tended to attract culturally diverse candidates into teaching, many of who were either former urban school students or members of local communities (*Lee et al., 2019; *Ricci et al., 2019b; Vernikoff et al., 2022). UTRs were also found to be effective in drawing equity- and justice-oriented residents to teach high-need subject areas and underserved populations, including STEM fields (*Garza et al., 2013), ELLs (*Goodwin et al., 2016), and students with special needs (*Ricci et al., 2019b). Many UTR programs strategically incorporated into their curriculum school resources and community cultures that helped provide a context-specific preparation for residents to meet the particular needs of urban schools (*Beck, 2016; *Hammerness & Craig, 2016; *Matsko & Hammerness, 2014; Vernikoff et al., 2022). Coupled with the comparatively higher retention rates of UTR graduates (*Papay et al., 2012; *Roegman et al., 2017), these findings showed hopeful signs that UTRs could help diversify urban teacher workforce and mitigate teacher shortage and attrition facing many urban districts (Ingersoll, 2001; Welsh & Swain, 2020).
We found limited evidence from this literature about UTR graduates’ classroom teaching and impact on student learning (*Papay et al., 2012; *Strom, 2015), despite residents’ self-reported improved sense of preparedness and commitment (*Reynolds et al., 2016; *Roegman et al., 2017). Studies also revealed variability across programs in terms of the resources and support residents received to learn about and practice culturally responsive teaching or build relationships with students (*Gatti, 2019; *Gatti & Catalano, 2015; *Marshall et al., 2021; *Theisen-Homer, 2021). Moreover, some state and district policy contexts (*Boggess, 2010) were found to have limited residents’ opportunities to experiment with innovative strategies (*Goodwin et al., 2016) or implement socially just and inclusive practices (*Ricci et al., 2019b; *Strom & Martin, 2016). Residents’ enactment of culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogies was also restrained by what they had to demonstrate in standardized assessment required for state certification (*Kuranishi & Oyler, 2017).
UTRs have been posited to solve many historical problems found in other types of teacher education programs (Berry et al., 2008), most notably the marginalized status of district and community educators and the disconnect between coursework and fieldwork in teacher learning (Grossman et al., 2008; Zeichner & Bier, 2015). The reviewed literature illustrated mentor teachers’ elevated roles in UTRs and their negotiation of expanded responsibilities and identities as classroom teachers and mentors. While mentor teachers recognized that mentoring residents allowed them to reflect on their practices and growth as teachers (*Garza et al., 2018; *Ricci et al., 2019a), they identified tensions associated with co-teaching with residents and collaborating with university partners (*Gardiner, 2011a; *Garza et al., 2019; *Goodwin et al., 2016; *Roegman et al., 2016b). Opportunities for professional preparation and support for mentoring also varied across programs, resulting in uneven mentoring quality and divergent learning opportunities available to the residents (*Garza et al., 2014; *Kolman et al., 2016; *Leon, 2014). These findings echo existing research calling for professional support for mentor teachers to prepare them for the expanded responsibilities as teachers, mentors, and school-based teacher educators (Orland-Barak & Wang, 2021).
Engaging a wider range of school and community partners in UTRs also introduced news challenges to coordinate between university courses and philosophies and the frameworks and practices adopted in the districts (*Beck, 2016; *Gardiner & Salmon, 2014; *Mattheis et al., 2020; *Roegman et al., 2016a; *Taylor et al., 2014). While residents in the reviewed studies largely reported positive learning experiences and improved sense of competence as urban teachers as a result of the year-long, mentored classroom teaching (*Garza et al., 2014; *Klein et al., 2016; *Marshall et al., 2021; *Reynolds et al., 2016), they similarly experienced tensions and conflicts due to epistemological and pedagogical differences between what they learned from the university and what they observed from their mentors and were expected to enact in schools (*Anderson-Levitt et al., 2017; *Garza et al., 2013; *Kolman et al., 2016), including programs intentionally attempting to build closer school-university partnerships (*Beck, 2016; *Taylor et al., 2014). These findings suggested that UTRs were not inherently immune to these ingrained challenges in teacher education they were expected to remediate.
Implications and Recommendations
Our review suggests that while there has been some research indicating UTRs’ benefits to grow, sustain, and diversify teacher workforce in urban schools, evidence showing their ability to improve resident teaching and student performance is limited and inconclusive. We invite further research to deepen and broaden our knowledge about the UTR model and its impact and encourage teacher educators and policymakers to develop clarified understandings of the UTR approach and its adaptability to their local contexts and particular needs.
Implications for UTR Research
Most studies included in this review employed qualitative methods and focused on current residents. We acknowledge that many UTR programs might not have been established long enough to create a large enough dataset about their graduates and the students they teach required for quantitative analysis with statistical significance and meaningful inferences. Moving forward, the field would benefit from more complex and longitudinal investigation of UTR programs by analyzing iterative cycles of data systematically collected from multiple sources and using mixed methods (*Beck, 2020a), accounting for both inside and outside of school factors (Milner, 2012) that dynamically influence teacher practices and the learning of their students. For instance, researchers could take advantage of administrative data documenting the number of residents who have completed UTR programs and enter and remain in urban classrooms. Ethnographic research depicting how UTR graduates enact and negotiate culturally responsive and inclusive teaching in both enabling and limiting institutional and policy conditions could also expand our knowledge about how their practices are shaped by and shaping the contexts in which they operate (Hammerness et al., 2016). Triangulating residents and graduates’ self-reported knowledge and effectiveness with a combination of survey and interview with school and district leaders, classroom observation, student work samples, and formative assessment data would further contribute to our knowledge about the benefits of UTRs in supporting more equitable learning for urban school students.
With a few exceptions (e.g., *Fisher-Ari et al., 2018; *Klein et al., 2015; *Kuranishi & Oyler, 2017), residents and mentor teachers were rarely involved in the research process in roles other than research participants, whose voices were indirectly relayed in writing by university researchers. Relatedly, the perspectives of urban school students and their parents, community members, and school and district leaders were notably marginalized in this literature. Participatory action research that privileges practitioner and community knowledge can be a powerful tool to empower UTR stakeholders to engage in joint inquiry into the development and improvement of UTRs in ways that respond to the dynamic needs of students in urban schools (Smit et al., 2020). Engaging district and community stakeholders in research as knowledge constructors can further foster resident’ learning about the wealth of community culture and assets embedded in urban environments (Welsh & Swain, 2020; *Williamson et al., 2016).
Much of this literature reported UTR programs situated in what Milner (2012) called “urban intensive” and “urban emergent” contexts: districts in metropolitan or larger cities and with higher percentages of students from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds. While residency programs predominantly exist in cities, rural districts have also initiated residencies with university partners (Guha et al., 2016), as documented in one of the reviewed studies (*Reynolds et al., 2016). The UTR model could be tested in “urban characteristic” districts (Milner, 2012) to examine its adaptability and impact on teacher workforce and student learning amid the increased student diversity in these areas. These efforts could add new knowledge about teacher education policies and practices needed for different “urban” settings and help further illuminate the changing conceptualizations of “urban education” (Welsh & Swain, 2020).
Implications for Urban Teacher Education
The proliferation of UTRs across the U.S. as a result of growing policy and funding interests has led to programs that are not always true to its name (*Beck, 2020a) and varied degree of curriculum coherence and mentoring support within and across programs, as shown from this review. The emphasis on clinical practice found in some UTR programs (*Gatti, 2019; Solomon, 2009) also runs the risk of deprofessionalizing teacher education by reducing teaching into a set of narrowly-defined technical strategies (Zeichner & Bier, 2015). We hope this review and the research suggestions outlined above can help teacher educators to clarify and deepen understandings of what the UTR model entails and what it might fall short despite of its promises. Several studies reviewed in this article (e.g., *Gardiner & Salmon, 2014; *Hammerness & Matsko, 2013; *Klein et al., 2016) offered innovative approaches to strengthen district-university-community partnerships that situated clinical learning in residents’ deep understanding of urban school and community contexts and development of reflective and adaptive expertise. These practices empowered stakeholders across institutions to develop shared responsibilities in curriculum design, instruction, and mentoring and to negotiate incoherence and tensions that might arise through collaborative planning and joint learning.
One element that is often overlooked in discussions about UTRs is the replication of models and tools, i.e., the residency model and rounds, from the medical profession. Teacher education as a field has been increasingly facing what Grossman (2008) called “jurisdictional challenges” that allege that the field fails to produce high-quality teachers and generate knowledge about teaching. While UTRs opened new possibilities for urban teacher education programs and practices, appropriating tools and language from an allegedly more prestigious profession might further challenge teacher educators’ jurisdiction over the professional preparation of teachers. We thus invite teacher educators to strategically leverage the pedagogical opportunities afforded by UTRs towards (re)creating our own, original models, tools, and language to advance practices in urban teacher preparation.
Recommendations for Educational Leaders and Policymakers
A challenge identified by researchers was the sustainability of UTR programs that typically relied on external grant funding. The Every Student Succeeds Act provided incentives for state education agencies (SEAs) and school districts to expand residency programs and the recent American Families Plan also reassured the federal support for residencies. SEAs could provide financial support complementing federal programs to sustain UTRs and similar district-university partnerships within their states. Another challenge was to balance between UTRs’ curricular and pedagogical needs and state teacher certification policies and university and district requirements. Studies in this review showed residents were committed to equitable and inclusive teaching for students from marginalized and minoritized communities. District and state policies that affirm and promote this commitment are likely to be helpful in recruiting and retaining a diverse teacher workforce. SEAs could also work with universities to streamline graduation and certification regulations to maximize the benefits of UTR programs in meeting the diverse needs of local districts. Similarly, district leaders and policymakers must develop a thorough understanding of UTRs before initiating such programs, or any new approaches to teacher education.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
Yiting would like to acknowledge the generous support provided by the Kitty DeGree Endowed Professorship in Education at the University of Louisiana Monroe. We thank the journal editors and anonymous reviewers for providing constructive feedback and helpful suggestions that strengthened this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
