Pre-Service Teacher Pathways to Urban Teaching: A Partnership Model for Nurturing Community-Based Urban Teacher Preparation‪.‬

Introduction A teacher's knowledge of how culture is formed and sustained, and his or her attitudes regarding education, are a vital component of effective student learning, particularly in classrooms where the teacher's background and culture are very different from those of the students (Loadman, Freeman, & Brookhart, 1999). Understanding the influence of culture on education has become increasingly important in recent years, and the relevance that cultural mapping has for learning is now recognized (Vygotsky, 1962; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Murrell, 2007). "Cultural mapping is the method by which to uncover the ideologies and meaning systems that play a significant role in shaping cultural practices and how young people [and teachers] position themselves in relation to those practices" (Murrell, 2007, pp. 21, 39). An individual's cultural map is shaped through experience; one relates all new experiences to the previously learned map, thereby interpreting the new in terms of the old and possibly also changing the map. It is through this map that perceivers--including teachers and students--identify cultural behaviors in others that are relevant to their own respective culture.