Professional Biography
Dr. Schiera’s work emphasizes finding convergence between university-based teacher education and the actual practice of teaching and learning in urban schools. In the Urban Teacher Apprenticeship Program, the justice-oriented foundations class, School, Society and Self, aims to enable novice teachers to (1) examine links between macro-level societal forces and the future classrooms that they will teach in, (2) position themselves as learners of the schools and communities in which they will teach, and (3) support them in developing their own professional vision of learning aims amid larger, equity aims. The Advanced Field Seminar course, for novices in the thick of their teaching apprenticeship, enables them to take an inquiry stance on their practice. For undergraduates, the academically-based community service (ABCS) course Urban Education positions Penn undergraduates and high school students at William L. Sayre as co-investigators of issues in urban education while conducting a youth participatory action research project to improve education at Sayre. Dr. Schiera’s research employs critical qualitative research methods and practitioner research methodologies to understand how novice teachers integrate justice and practice as emerging educators. This is part of a broader set of research questions about the possible intersections of Social Justice Teacher Education and Practice-based Teacher Education. He aspires (and struggles) to live this blurring of boundaries between teaching and learning, schools and society, research and practice in his work at Penn and in his day-to-day work as a social studies educator at William L. Sayre High School in West Philadelphia.
