The Imperative of Social Foundations to (Urban) Education Research and Practice

Abstract

This conceptual article aims to clarify the important relationship between the fields of social foundations of education (SFE) and urban education (UE). We argue that SFE (a) enables more precise understandings of urban in one’s preparation to practice in or conduct research with implications for urban schooling contexts and (b) strengthens one’s capacity to identify the questions and pedagogical and methodological approaches central to enacting justice-oriented education research and practice. This article calls attention to three specific SFE subdisciplines—history, philosophy, and sociology of education—as necessary complements to any education program of study, building our argument from an examination of SFE’s relationship to UE specifically. Accessing multidisciplinary perspectives to deeply understand and address vexing challenges posed by (urban) space and place is a central feature of this article.