The Things they Carry: Ideology in an Urban Teacher Professional Community

This article provides an opportunity to extend the discussion about teacher communities as part of complex school reform models, specifically centered on those communities whose membership is drawn on a semi-voluntary basis. Through a sixteen-month long ethnography, I document the activities of an urban teacher professional community (TPC) at a high school located in a large city in the Northeast, serving a majority of linguistically and culturally diverse students. Guided by Sharp and Greens definition of teacher ideologies, the study focuses on how TPC members negotiated curriculum, teacher learning, and student discipline, carrying ideologies that impacted the outcomes of the communitys work, originally intended to increase teacher collaboration and foster quality teaching.Jorgelina Abbate-Vaughn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Her research interests center on the possibilities and challenges that urban schools pose, on school reform approaches, on teacher preparation, and on e.ective educational approaches for low-income, culturally and linguistically diverse (LCLD) students. Address correspondence to Jorgelina Abbate-Vaughn, Graduate School of Education- Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Massachusetts- Boston, Wheatley Hall 2nd .floor, Room 99-04- Boston, MA 02125, USA; e-mail: jorgelina. abbate@umb.edu.