Warming up to the schools: Connecting universities with teaching practice in Chicago (Illinois)

This dissertation describes changes in the relationship between four Chicago Colleges of Education and the Chicago Public Schools during the years 1972–1997. During this period, the universities and the school system faced constant changes in their environments, including two substantial reform movements. One reform movement was the drive to reorganize colleges of education around practice in K–12 schools. The second reform movement was Chicago School Reform, a radical decentralization, followed by a recentralization of school governance.; The four Chicago universities in this study, DePaul, Roosevelt, and Chicago State Universities, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, responded to the local school reforms in ways that echo the national movement to reform education schools. In all four cases, deans and professors of education have addressed the changes in the Chicago Public Schools with programs of study and research. Their efforts were greatly assisted by private foundation funding and strong leadership within and outside the universities. Colleges of Education were constrained in their efforts by certain institutional characteristics and an ever-increasing pressure to produce more traditional research.