Missing misters: uncovering the pedagogies and positionalities of male teachers of color in the school lives of Black and Latino adolescent boys

ABSTRACT

Educational stakeholders often recruit male teachers of color as solutions to the problems facing Black and Latino boys and young men in PreK-12 schools. However, given the assumptions made of these teachers’ role in the lives of boys of color and their disproportionally low presence, few studies have considered what boys themselves report as missed because of the absence of Black and Latino male teachers. This case study drew from the voices of five Black and Latino adolescent boys in one urban secondary school in the United States to theorize what the participants missed (e.g. yearned for connections, reflections of self) and missed out on (e.g. seeing positive images of men of color) by not having a more robust presence of Black and Latino male teachers of color or misters. Findings indicated the need for boys’ voices in advancing nuanced recruitment and retention discourses for their male teachers of color.     

Black men teaching: toward a theory of social isolation in organizations

ABSTRACT

While there continues to be increasing research about Black male teachers’ school-based experiences, there is less empirical evidence on the variation in these experiences for this subgroup. Drawing on Kanter’s Theory of Numbers and Group Composition, the researcher used the qualitative method to compare the perceptions of Black male teachers in schools that employ just one Black male teacher versus schools with larger numbers of Black male teachers. A theory of social isolation in organizations is proposed to explain differences in the variation of school-based experiences for Black male teachers. When compared to Black men in schools with larger percentages of Black male teachers on the faculty, those Black men who were the only Black male teachers on their faculty were more likely to describe feeling socially isolated and disconnected from their colleagues.     

The diversity trap? Critical explorations of black male teachers’ negotiations of leadership and learning in London state schools

ABSTRACT

Black and minority ethnic teachers are significantly underrepresented in British schools. Despite increasing anxieties about Britain’s ‘diversity shortage’ among teachers, recent studies on the experiences of Black teachers generally, and Black male teachers specifically, remain rather sparse. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 Black Caribbean and Black African male teachers with five or more years of experience in London schools, this article deploys Bourdieusian conceptions of organizational habitus to explore the ways in which the national ‘diversity shortage’ can lead to a local ‘diversity trap’ in state schools that limits the range of roles Black male teachers are encouraged to pursue in schools. Findings suggest that pressures for Black male teachers to serve in racialized roles as community liaisons, role models, and school-wide disciplinarians, particularly for ethno-racial minority students, have stymied the long-term progress of Black male teachers towards departmental and administrative leadership – ranks at which the diversity shortage is even more acute.     

Meeting myself: race-gender oppression and a genre study of Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys

ABSTRACT

Increasing the number of Black men teachers and single-sex schooling options have been heralded as necessary to reverse trends in the failure of US education institutions to adequately educate Black boys. Too little research interrogates Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys for how they might reinforce anti-oppressive conceptions of race, gender and sexuality. A genre study – the multidimensional, intersectional examination of social identity to explain one’s persistent dehumanization – was utilized to investigate how Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys shape the boys’ understanding of Black manhood and masculinities. Regardless of schooling arrangement, findings suggest Black men teachers must recognize and disavow hegemonic gender logics in interaction efforts aimed at improving Black boys’ lives. Additionally, I argue the potential of Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys to function as sites for reimagining Black boys’ humanity in ways that counter persistent messages of their inferiority and disposability (i.e. aniblackness).     

‘The world they’ve been born into’: Black male teachers on Blackness,masculinities and leadership

ABSTRACT

In this article, life history methodology and principles of counterstorytelling are used to examine moments when one Black male preservice social studies teacher and three Black male social studies teachers challenge Black masculinist visions of leadership, and moments when they seem complicit in perpetuating these visions. Findings indicate that these educators’ understandings of Blackness, maleness, and the pursuit of Black masculine recognition are fluid, developing and sometimes contradictory. We argue that while necessary across disciplines, interrogations of Black masculinity are uniquely imperative in social studies teacher education due to how assumptions about Blackness and maleness have shaped struggles for Black civic recognition.     

‘How I show up for Brown and Black students’: Asian American male mathematics teachers seeking solidarity

ABSTRACT

The ratio of Asian American teachers to Asian American students is the most disproportionate of all racial groups, where Asian American students are least likely to have an Asian American teacher. In addition, little research focuses on the experiences of Asian American teachers, particularly in connection with issues of racism. Using AsianCrit, internalized racism, and stereotype management, this study investigates how Asian American male mathematics teachers conceptualize their racial/ethnic and mathematics teacher identities given the prevalence of the Model Minority Myth. Using photovoice interviews, findings indicate that participants experienced internalized racism and engaged in stereotype management by distancing themselves from other Asian Americans, discussing their own difficulties in mathematics, and actively reaching out to form relationships with Black and Latinx students. We recommend supports for Asian American teachers and all teachers of color to build critical consciousness to reduce internalized racism and empower themselves and their students.     

Envisioning Black space in environmental education for young children

ABSTRACT

In this article, we bring attention to absences and deficit assumptions that continue to circulate in relation to environmental education for young Black children in North America. We focus our attention on tracing some of the ways in which racial innocence works to exclude and limit possibilities for young Black children’s learning. Our analysis includes making visible connections between racialized discourses of childhood innocence, antiblackness in schooling, ongoing settler colonialism, and dominant forms of environmental education for young children. In seeking otherwise possibilities for Black childhoods in environmental education contexts, we turn to Black speculative fiction as a creative and generative mode of imagining fugitive educational spaces for young Black children.     

Disrupting an imposed racial identity or performing the model minority? The pursuit of postsecondary education by young African immigrant men in Southern Ontario,Canada

ABSTRACT

This article examines how young African immigrant men in Southern Ontario cope with the dominant racial identity at school in an effort to improve their academic performance and access postsecondary education (PSE). Critical race theory in education is employed to explain how the young men distance themselves from stereotypes about Black masculinity by regulating their own behaviour and differentiating themselves from their Caribbean immigrant peers. Sixty-seven young men who had immigrated to Southern Ontario from several African countries over the last 10 years were interviewed individually and in focus groups for the study. The findings suggest that the research participants adopted a model minority status within an educational system that clearly embodies racist and systemically oppressive frameworks.     

The Black male teacher: a 10-year content analysis of empirical research

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to characterize the last decade of Black male teacher empirical research. The present study aimed to elucidate the most salient themes, commonalities, and departures in the literature on Black male educators. A quantitative content analysis was performed to systematically characterize the research trends present in this line of inquiry. The data were collected using an inductively generated coding scheme. A sample of n = 31 studies were identified and examined from articles published between 2006 and 2016. Then frequency data were computed to characterize the data under investigation. The study results indicate that Black male teacher research is nuanced and burgeoning, despite several lapses in article production. The results of this study contribute to the literature on Black male teacher recruitment, retention, and experiences by providing a survey of current research trends that suggest areas of strength, as well as challenges warranting further consideration.     

Using our voices,losing our bodies: Michael Brown,Trayvon Martin,and the spirit murders of Black male professors in the academy

Abstract

The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other Black males have generated new civil rights urgencies in Black communities and spirited academic discourses in higher education regarding the educational and social plight of Black males in America. Connecting the deaths of Black males to our lived experiences in the academy, we use a text messaging performative writing style to demonstrate how Black males are not only gunned down in the streets of America by police but also are metaphorically gunned down in the academy. That is to say, white colleagues and students attempt to use what we call the bullet of rejection, the bullet of silencing, and the bullet of disrespect to destroy us and our academic agenda. We conclude with a call to action for teacher education programs as a way to deepen their understanding of the racialized experiences of Black males in the academy and Black males in America.     

Role models without guarantees: corrective representations and the cultural politics of a Latino male teacher in the borderlands

In recent years mentorship has become a popular ‘solution’ for struggling boys of color and has led to the recruitment of more male of color teachers. While not arguing against the merits of mentorship, this article critiques what the author deems ‘corrective representations.’ Corrective representations are the imagined embodiment of proper and productive masculinities that male of color educators are asked to perform. This discourse perpetuates confining representations of identity and locates the problem of boys of color within their own actions. Designed as an ethnographic case study, this article explores the life of one Latino male teacher as he navigates discourses of corrective representation as coordinator of his school’s Latino boys program. This project provides a detailed account of the cultural politics of Latino male mentorship and offers the notion of a critical borderlands approach to identity as an avenue to problematize essentialist and deficit approaches to Latino boys.     

An exploratory study of the academic engagement and beliefs of Latino male high school students

This study provides insights to the school experiences of Latino male students through an exploration of how they describe their beliefs about education and how they engage in school for academic success. Data is drawn from interviews and surveys conducted with Latino males that participated in New York University’s Black and Latino Male School Intervention Study (BLMSIS) between 2006 and 2011. The findings revealed a dynamic interplay among how the students ‘do school’ (behavioral engagement), their intellectual involvement (cognitive engagement), and their strong beliefs in the education for social mobility shaped schooling for them. This focus on the experiences of young Latino males seeks to assist researchers, policymakers, and practitioners alike design and implement programs and policies to promote their educational progress and success.     

Young Adults’ Race,Wealth, and Entrepreneurship

This study explored relationships among young adults’ wealth and entrepreneurial activities with emphasis on how these relationships differed among racial and ethnic groups. Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, results indicated that young adults’ (N = 8984) higher accumulated amounts of wealth were associated with pursuing self-employment at higher rates; however, differences emerged when the associations were explored with various types of wealth and within racial and ethnic groups. Black young adults’ greater debt and net worth were associated with their increased likelihoods of self-employment. Among Latino/a young adults, greater liquid assets and net worth were associated with increased likelihoods of self-employment. Wealth was unrelated to white young adults’ self-employment. Wealth appeared to play an outsized role in the self-employment of black and Latino/a young adults compared to that of their white counterparts. In other words, racial and ethnic minority young adults may have a heavier burden for generating their own capital to embark on entrepreneurial activities when mainstream credit markets are unresponsive or inaccessible. Policy implications are discussed.     

Equity,inclusion, and antiblackness in mathematics education

ABSTRACT

Despite decades of equity- and inclusion-oriented discourse and reform in mathematics education, Black learners in the U.S. continue to experience dehumanizing and violent forms of mathematics education. I suggest that equity for Black learners in mathematics education is a delusion rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries, contingent on appeasing white logics and sensitivities, and characterized at best by incremental changes that do little to threaten the maintenance of racial hierarchies inside or outside of mathematics education. Moreover, the forms of inclusion offered up in equity-oriented discourses and reforms represent contexts of containment and enclosure that keep Black people in their same relative position. Refusal is suggested as a strategy for Black learners to resist the anti-Black character of mathematics education, and as a first step in actualizing forms of mathematics education that are worthy of Black learners.     

Daring to care: the role of culturally relevant care in mentoring Black and Latino male high school students

This study seeks to challenge the uni-dimensional way care in school is written about by highlighting an often overlooked aspect of care – the kind that students do for each other. Data is drawn from focus groups conducted with the youth participants and founder of Umoja Network for Young Men (UMOJA), an all-male, school-based mentoring program for over-aged and under-credited (OA/UC) high school students. The authors draw on theories of culturally relevant pedagogy, care, and critical pedagogy to present the findings and propose a form of culturally relevant care (CRC) that entails warm demanding and building mutual trust. This study highlights the humanizing experiences of the Black and Latino male transfer students and their mentor. This focus on the experiences of young Black and Latino male participants seeks to shift the discourse from one focused on deficits to one that recognizes their agency and capacities for social and academic success.     

Shaking the bad boys: troubling the criminalization of black boys’ childhood play,hegemonic white masculinity and femininity,and the school playground-to-prison pipeline

ABSTRACT

Few studies have sought to understand the childhood play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education (ECE), and a majority of those that investigate them often socially construct Black boys’ play as criminal, dangerous, and monstrous. Considering the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and femininity or the racial and gendered power and privilege White boys and girls bring to societal spaces including playgrounds, little is known about how such power influences the experiences of Black boys who play with them. In this conceptual paper, I draw on critical race theory (CRT) to trouble the criminalization of Black boys’ childhood play and hegemonic White masculinity and femininity, which can prove violent and dehumanizing to Black boys. As such, I suggest that similar to the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP), Black boys may become victims of what I call the school playground-to-prison pipeline (SPTPP) as a consequence of White children’s accusations, fears, misperceptions, and misreadings of Black boys’ play. Recommendations are provided for teacher and ECE to better support Black boys and the cross-cultural play interactions between them and White children.     

Border stories: using critical race and Latino critical theories to understand the experiences of Latino/a children

The number of school-age children of color in US schools is increasing, while the teaching force continues to be dominated by white teachers. According to the 2013 Digest of Education Statistics in the 2011–2012 school year, 81.9% of public school teachers were white, while the projected number of Hispanic students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools is expected to increase 33% between 2011 and 2022. In my experience, the issue of immigration is often ignored by the majority white teacher population, but, as I will share in this article, it is part of the lived experience of Latino children. I present my students’ border stories as discussed in relation to Latino children’s literature. I am using the words ‘border stories’ to represent the narratives my students shared about their families’ experiences crossing the US–Mexico border as well as what they felt about the societal discourse around ‘illegal immigrants.’ Critical race theory (CRT) and Latino critical theory (LatCrit) are used to frame these border stories to speak against the majoritarian story.     

Uncertain aspirations: Latino students and dropout in the United States

ABSTRACT

Latinos are one of the fastest growing and most racially diverse students in American schools. Driven by immigration, they account for more than 24% of the kindergarten to high school population. Despite their numbers, the achievement gap between Latinos and their non-Latino peers remains wide since they have the highest rate of dropout. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we find that Latino students who attend more than one school during their academic career are more likely to dropout than those who do not. We also find lower rates of dropout among children of parents who stated that they did not have difficulties interacting with school administrators due to language barriers. With regards to migration, we do not find immigrant status to be significant in dropout – a noteworthy effect given the increases in raids and deportation by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.     

‘It wasn’t racism; it was more misunderstanding.’ White teachers,Latino/a students,and racial battle fatigue

This article explores how and why a group of Latino/a high school students identify and explain racism differently over the course of an 18-month participatory action research (PAR) project. To do this we examine what recent scholarship has termed racial microaggressions in what is thought of as the Post-Racial America public school system. Pulling examples from student and teacher interview, focus group, and class discussion data we first examine how these students’ teachers conceptualize and talk about racism, cross-racial relationships, and racial misunderstandings, and then we juxtapose that with students’ discursive work to make sense of the ways their teachers make their conceptualizations known and/or seen in school. Focusing on the K-12 context, this study finds racial battle fatigue may be why students switch between how they label these aggressions.     

Navigating health care: brokerage and access for undocumented Latino immigrants under the 2010 Affordable Care Act

ABSTRACT

Brokerage is a prominent mechanism that explains access for Latino immigrants to many American institutions. However, few studies examine the dual nature of brokerage in answering questions on access to health care for undocumented Latino immigrants. The growing importance of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and ethnic navigators connecting immigrants to health care under the 2010 Affordable Care Act calls attention to the duality of brokers and its role in access. The study draws from 44 in-depth interviews with providers, clinic directors, navigators, and immigrant patients and two years of fieldwork in FQHCs in California’s San Francisco Bay Area (2011–2013). Results show that brokers enable access through coaching and myth-busting but they also hinder it through scrutiny and bureaucratic filtering. The widespread dependence on brokerage, I argue, leads to ersatz brokerage, such as when providers navigate the health-care system for the undocumented without the appropriate linguistic resources or coordination. Furthermore, the study shows that the duality in brokerage generates misinformation, churning, and alienation. Understanding the relational processes that both include and exclude vulnerable populations from needed services enhances theories of immigrant integration and can help design more efficient policies and address inequalities related to documentation status.