Changing Urban Education

'Changing Urban Education provides a stimulating and critical compendium for urban teachers, including those who are experienced, new and still in teacher education, and who are committed to more socially just pedagogies and curriculum for working class students. Here are both the intellectual and practical resources for teachers to reclaim and justify pedagogies, policies and curricula of hope to change urban schools in changing contexts against failed and reductive neo-liberal agendas.' Bob Lingard, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Queensland, Australia
'This is one of the few books to come out of this country which takes seriously the idea that urban education is different, and that what makes it different deserves serious attention. Pratt-Adams and his colleagues avoid the clichés of urban schools as places of unmitigated failure and ask us to look more deeply at the urban. They invite us to explore the way the urban is lived and imagined, the inequalities and injustices it generates, but also the rich resources and possibilities it offers. The scope of the book is impressive, both in terms of the urban contexts that are reviewed and the theoretical resources that are brought to bear on understanding those contexts. Yet, at the same time, the book is firmly grounded in practice and experience, inviting readers to reflect on their own urban lives and their own experiences of urban schools. It is aimed primarily at those who are studying for Education Studies degrees. They will find it invaluable, and I shall certainly be recommending it to my students. However, it deserves to be read more widely by anyone with an interest in urban education, or in social justice issues in education.' Alan Dyson, Professor of Education, University of Manchester, UK