This chapter reviews directly observable data about K-12 urban teachers pertinent to the intrapsychic and psychosocial factors influencing their propensities to effectively learn across cultural differences between themselves and their students.

Chapter 5 presents a comprehensive conclusion, revisiting the theory of vested interests in the context of education policy. It summarises the key findings of the analysis and examines the extent to which group politics can explain both change and stability in European education systems. The chapter highlights the growing tensions between interest groups – particularly the dominant teachers’ unions, which have a strong stake in maintaining the status quo – and governments striving to improve underperforming education systems, provide better support for the most vulnerable students, and raise academic standards for all. Ultimately, the chapter argues that for governments to achieve meaningful educational reform, they must first redefine their relationship with powerful interest groups, particularly the unions, to overcome entrenched resistance and drive lasting change.

This chapter extends the argument that K-12 urban teachers learn through organizational socialization to adopt shared cultural meanings about their students that inform the individual actions they use to manage cultural differences between themselves and their students. It argues that these actions operate to increase, maintain, or decrease relational distance – or the perception that there is psychological status and structural distance amongst individuals within an organization – between teachers and their students. It also begins to develop the argument that urban-teacher actions may vary based on the nature of their organizational commitment – in particular how the type of commitment they have for their work informs their perceptions and management of various role stressors in their workplace environments.

This chapter combines insights from across the three literatures that inform the book’s central thesis to demonstrate how these disciplines speak to one another in ways that amount to a novel approach for resolving the knowing–doing gap introduced in the book’s Introduction. In marrying these interdisciplinary perspectives, the chapter concludes with recommendations for resolving lingering questions about how Model O-I and Model O-II systems in K-16 school contexts serving students from low-income and other minoritized cultural communities are established, maintained, or precluded altogether.

This chapter explores how instructors designed their classroom management strategies in response to the student challenges discussed in their interviews. It is guided by three research questions: (1) How do instructors enact traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies in response to challenging student situations? (2) To what extent does instructor use of traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies align with action strategies associated with Model I and Model II learning values in the action science literature? (3) From an action science perspective, what consequences do traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies have for CUNY instructors’ behavioral worlds?

This chapter explores the pervasive influence of a "white gaze" as it frames the collective action strategies K-12 urban teachers use to manage intercultural differences between themselves and their students, and how those strategies can operate to increase, maintain, or decrease relational distance with consequences for teachers’ cultural learning processes at work. It also discusses some key intrapsychic and interpersonal constraints on teachers’ cultural learning processes at work associated with the intergroup and group dynamics they share in urban schools.

This chapter introduces action science as a novel approach to reconciling the knowing–doing gap presented in the Introduction. It reviews primary goals of this discipline as established in its seminal literature, as well as central tenets and terms in this discipline that are foundational to the analyses featured throughout the book. It also presents evidence that action science is a suitable approach to reconciling this knowing–doing gap, because its central tenets and terms speak to consistent and recurring themes in the extant educational literature. I explain how the ladder-of-inference framework from this literature is used to investigate K-12 urban teachers’ inferential thinking about cultural differences in the literature review featured across the next six chapters.

This chapter reviews information about the demographic and democratic imperatives prompting K-16 educators to reconsider what they do not know about their students’ cultural backgrounds in urban schools and minority serving institutions (MSIs). It highlights the connection between the student–teacher racial mismatch characterizing K-16 contexts in the United States and a coexistent cultural mismatch. It makes an argument that these demographic characteristics present a human capital challenge that ultimately diminishes teacher effectiveness at learning across cultural differences between themselves and their students in urban schools and MSIs. It concludes by modeling this human capital challenge as a knowing–doing gap using a framework from the organizational literature.

Between 2000 and 2020, governments intensified efforts to raise education standards, driven in part by the OECD’s PISA surveys, which exposed stark disparities in national performance. The case study countries lagged behind the top performers, with Germany ranking near the very bottom. As a result, introducing new reforms – or revising previous performance-driven policies – became a top priority. However, teachers’ unions continued to resist these measures, as they placed sharp light on teacher performance, potentially threatening job security.

This chapter examines the extent of educational reform across the case countries. It highlights how Germany, after decades of near stagnation, embarked on major reforms as the government successfully curtailed union influence. In contrast, in Sweden, which had initially embraced significant changes, experienced a slowdown and partial reversal of earlier reforms following the resurgence of teacher union power. England, despite a Labour government, continued to push forward with reforms, as unions remained effectively held at bay. Meanwhile, France saw little change, as unions repeatedly thwarted reform efforts from both the politically right and left.

The chapter further examines how teachers’ unions, having solidified power bases at both the local and EU levels, effectively sidelined competing interest groups, particularly private schools and parental groups. As a result, they maintained a dominant role in shaping education policy, largely insulated from broader public influence.

Chapter 3 investigates the period 1980–2000, a time when governments, with the exception of Germany, inherited comprehensive systems widely seen as inadequate for equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed in an era of rapid globalisation and technological advancement. In response, governments sought to drive higher levels of performance in their education systems, introducing major reforms such as decentralisation, including school autonomy and accountability measures for schools and teachers. However, implementing these reforms proved extraordinarily challenging, as teachers’ unions – now deeply entrenched in the existing institutions – strongly resisted changes at different levels of policy-making venues as these reforms stood to erode their traditional sources of power and material benefits. The chapter demonstrates that in countries where union influence weakened, such as England and Sweden, significant performance reforms took hold, creating opportunities for traditionally marginalised groups from private sectors. Conversely, in countries where unions retained their dominance, such as France and Germany, the education system remained largely unchanged, reinforcing the status quo.

This chapter begins by highlighting three ways in which K-12 urban educators and college faculty working in MSIs experience similar challenges managing cultural differences between themselves and their students from low-income and other minoritized communities. It then segues into the empirical portion of the book, by introducing the study context, as well as methods and materials used to collect the data analyzed in-depth across the following four chapters.

Chapter 2 covers the period from 1960 to 1980 and analyses how teachers’ unions emerged as the most powerful force in education policy, often at the expense of other interest groups – most notably the private school associations and parental groups. The chapter investigates how this shift in influence shaped major education reforms of that era. It explains how governments found it relatively easy to expand secondary education to an entirely new generation, as teachers’ unions stood to gain substantial material benefits. In contrast, governments faced extraordinary difficulties in integrating the selective education systems into comprehensive school types aimed at promoting social inclusion, largely due to strong union opposition. Additionally, the chapter analyses how teachers’ unions, in fierce competition with other interest groups, consolidated and extended their influence at local levels across the case countries and the European Union.

This chapter returns to the cultural psychology literature from which the term "cultural learning" originates, to explore evidence from the previous five chapters that K-12 urban teachers experience three types of cultural learning at work: imitative learning, instructed learning, and collaborative learning. It concludes by reconceptualizing cultural learning as a process of organizational learning, and with the argument that the cultural learning processes urban teachers typically engage in arguably diminish their capacities for acquiring critical cultural competencies.

This chapter summarizes evidence from Chapters 2 through 5 that organizational conditions in urban schools facilitate both single- and double-loop learning amongst K-12 teachers about their students’ lived experiences as racial and cultural minorities in American society. It builds the argument that even where urban teachers may take the initiative to engage in double-loop learning, prevailing cultural and organizational norms in urban schools make doing so nearly impossible.