“I’m None of the Above”: Exploring Themes of Heteropatriarchy in the Life Histories of Black Male Educators

Abstract

Black male teachers are consistently positioned in teacher recruitment and teacher education discourse as the potential solution to a myriad of social and educational problems. However, the expectations of Black male performance are at times predicated on limiting and oppressive assumptions. In this qualitative study, the authors use the Black feminist tenet, heteropatriarchy, to examine the life histories of two Black male teacher candidates and one Black male teacher in order to convey the problematic relationship among racial and gendered stereotypes, professional identities, and classroom experiences. Our findings suggest that the expectations Black male educators perceive others to hold of them do not leave space for diverse expressions of racial, gendered, and sexual identities. We conclude by offering recommendations toward identifying and challenging themes of heteropatriarchy within the social, cultural, and professional expectations communicated to Black male teacher candidates and teachers.     

Descendants of “Ruth:” black Girls Coping Through the “Black Male Crisis”

This article presents the complex relationship between how black male and female identities have been constructed dichotomously in response to the gender framed “crisis” in black America. The ethnographic research study was conducted in an secondary African American History course, located in an urban school district in the southern portion of the United States. A case study of one black female student in a class of fourteen black male students was developed to deconstruct opposition and the use of resistance and empowerment by the female student. The classroom interactions among the male students, teacher, and Nicole were presented and analyzed from Nicole’s perspective. Analysis centralizes how Nicole interprets the class community, social interactions, and language used reflecting the needs of the African American males at the expense of her own social, cultural, and gender identity.     

What do Pre-Service Teachers See as Their Roles in Promoting Positive Social Environments? “I see Myself as a Facilitator of Acceptance”

Teacher educators describe a developmental process they use for preparing pre-service teachers to support preschool-age children with and without disabilities in becoming socially competent. Social competence is crucial in developing the “whole” child and may actually foster other areas of development. Using qualitative data gathered from multiple classes over several years, the authors explain ways they guide future teachers in learning how to provide positive social environments. They describe their observations of changes in students’ beliefs about their roles and responsibilities, which appear to be influenced by the guided experiences they have provided. Activities implemented in early childhood and early childhood special education courses are shared, as well as student work samples that illustrate developing awareness and understanding.     

“I Do This for All of the Reasons America Doesn't Want Me To”: The Organic Pedagogies of Black Male Instructors

ABSTRACT

This article examines the teaching philosophies of Black male teachers of Black male students in manhood development classes in a district-wide program in Oakland, California. Drawing on observations and instructor interview data, we explore the teachers’ histories, teaching philosophies, and the trajectory of their racial-educational understandings. We utilize Gramsci's (1971 Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci: Hoare, Q. & Smith, G. N. (Eds.). (Hoare, Q. & Smith, G. N., trans.) New York, NY: International.  [Google Scholar]) theory of the organic intellectual, Mills’ (1997 Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]) and Leonardo's (2013 Leonardo, Z. (2013). The story of schooling: Critical race theory and the educational racial contract. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 34, 599–610. doi: 10.1080/01596306.2013.822624[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) theories of the subperson and substudent, and Dumas’ (2014 Dumas, M. J. (2014). “Losing an arm”: Schooling as a site of Black suffering. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 17(1), 1–29. doi: 10.1080/13613324.2013.850412 [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) notion of Black suffering to theorize the ways that race comes into play in the teaching of African American male students. We find that racialization and re-humanization are key to instructors’ teaching, and we identify two key aspects of their teaching philosophies: (1) Humanization/Love and (2) Reciprocity.     

“Whose World is This?”: A Composite Counterstory of Black Male Elementary School Teachers as Hip-Hop Otherfathers

From a critical race theory lens, the author shares data from a yearlong study on Black male elementary school teachers from the Hip-Hop generation. In this article, the author represents the data from said study as a composite counterstory which highlights how Black males are alienated, adultified, and criminalized in American public schools. Furthermore, in this article, the concept of otherfathering is comprehensively defined as it relates to how Black male teachers mentor and support their students.     

Discussion on the Transformation from “Want Me to Learn” to “I Want to Learn” in English learning

<正>With the reform and opening up and internationalization,English has become the main language of international communication,and more and more people pay great attention to English learning.However,in the actual learning process,many students are lack of interest in English learning.In this paper,I take my personal experience as an example to discusses how     

The “Datafication” of Teaching: Can Teachers Speak Back to the Numbers?

Teachers face considerable and increasing pressure in their working lives. Labor intensification compels teachers to work faster, harder, and longer. However, teachers also experience increasing external control over what they teach and how they teach. These processes are increasingly made possible by the “datafication” of teaching, whereby the educational process is increasingly transformed into numbers that allow measurement, comparison, and the functioning of high-stakes accountability systems linked to rewards and sanctions. Although there is no question that being able to use student assessment data to support learning has an important place in teachers' repertoire of skills, “datafication” refers to the use of data in a way that has become increasingly detached from supporting learning and is much more concerned with the management of teacher performance as an end in itself. This article presents two currents of critical thought in relation to teachers' work, labor process theory and poststructural analyses grounded in the concept of performativity, and discusses them as a way of “making sense” of teachers' work and the “datafication” of teaching, with a particular focus on questions of control and resistance.

?It seeks to understand why, despite the pressures on teachers, teacher resistance has seldom developed in ways, at times, or on a scale that both experience and theoretical insight might have predicted. There are clearly significant differences between the two perspectives presented in this article, not least in the ways they conceptualize and explain “resistance.” However, common ground is identifiable and the two theoretical approaches can be bridged in a form that can be productive for those seeking to “speak back to the numbers.” In looking to broker this theoretical divide, I argue that frame theory, rooted within the sociology of social movements, can offer a fruitful way of theory bridging, while also providing the basis for a wider politics of transformation. The article offers several examples of grassroots initiatives formed to oppose standardized testing in England that provide practical examples of this “ideas work” in action.     

“I Don’t See Color”: Challenging Assumptions about Discussing Race with Young Children

Early childhood classrooms in the US continue to become increasingly diverse as we journey through the twenty first century. Yet and still, many early childhood educators have been slow to respond to these shifts in diversity on the basis of both developmental and political concerns. In this guess editorial, I argue for the integration of anti-racist education in the early childhood social studies classroom. The reasons I discuss here concern: when and how children develop racial attitudes, the difficulty of altering long-standing stereotypes, student empowerment, critical teacher reflection, and issues of standardization. I conclude with several considerations teachers should heed as they engage in this form of education.     

“Staying Black”: the demonstration of racial identity and womanhood among a group of young high-achieving Black women

Signithia Fordham’s theory of “racelessness” purports that while interacting with teachers, administrators, and peers in the school setting, academically successful Blacks must suppress the racial identities of their home worlds to secure and maintain the label of high achiever. My objectives were to examine how young Black women navigate between racially homogenous public schools in their neighborhoods to a racially integrated setting, and to highlight their involvement in work groups and social clubs as a way of expressing their racial identity and burgeoning womanhood. This study used interviews and questionnaire data gathered from a cohort of high-achieving young Black women in a highly selective honors high school to dispute Fordham’s theory, and to examine the various strategies that these women use to become and remain academically successful. This study revealed that through social club participation these female students are not raceless, and consciously identify as Black, and develop and demonstrate versions of Black womanhood that allow them to negotiate diversity. Implications for promoting racial integration, the development of Black identity, and the academic success of Black female students are provided.     

“Brothers Gonna Work It Out:” Understanding the Pedagogic Performance of African American Male Teachers Working with African American Male Students

Drawing from ethnographic data, this paper explores how African American male teachers working with African American male students performed their pedagogy. This paper highlights how teachers’ understanding of African American males social and educational needs shaped their pedagogical performance. Interestingly however, teachers’ performance was contingent on the diverse ways they imagined African American males should engage within their social and political worlds. These findings suggest then that African American male teachers’ pedagogic performances were both complex and multifaceted.     

What Did We Learn About Our Teachers and Principals? Results of the TALIS-2013 International Comparative Study

The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is a large-scale and authoritative international study of teachers. It is conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to collect and compare information about teachers and principals in different countries in such key areas as the training and professional development of teachers, performance appraisals, school management and educational goals and practices, job satisfaction, and confidence in one’s professional abilities.     

Students’ Perceptions of Learning in an Online Multiround Business Simulation Game: What Can We Learn from Them?

Multiround business simulation games have been gaining popularity in higher education. However, certain aspects of experiential learning of individual students in the game remain unaddressed in research literature. Team assessments, such as team papers, appear a common, “natural” choice given the team‐based nature of the games but may potentially mask individual learning outcomes. In this study we use a qualitative method to glean from individual students’ papers a deeper understanding of the process of learning of individual students in a team‐based, multiround business simulation game. Our findings indicate that individual and timely assessments are necessary to identify cases of not meeting the expected individual learning outcomes for the instructor's corrective intervention. This study contributes to the understanding of the process and outcomes of student learning in a multiround business simulation game, methods of teaching a supply chain and operations class with a simulation, and methods for better aligning course goals and assessments.     

Male Teachers in Feminised Teaching Areas: Marching to the beat of the men's movement drums?

Calls for more male teachers are prevalent in current gender debates in education. A dominant argument in this debate is that boys are often alienated from school because of a lack of male role models in feminised areas of the school curriculum and in primary schools. Little research has investigated male teachers' accounts of their work within feminised environments. Drawing on data collected in two research studies in music education, this paper focuses on accounts given by male teachers about (a) practices adopted specifically to work with boys and (b) the role of the male music teacher. Analysis of these data suggests that some male teachers working in feminised areas of the school curriculum adopt practices which, rather than challenging dominant constructions of masculinity, sometimes reinforce gender stereotypical behaviours in boys. We argue that calls for increasing the number of male teachers in feminised areas of schooling need also to be informed by open discussion of the underlying assumptions about masculinity which teachers themselves bring to their work.     

Seeking the Self-consciousness of Black Woman from the Point of View of“Womanism”in Everyday Use

Alice Walker is one of the prominent American writers in American women’ s literature and black literature in 1950s-1960s.The short story Everyday Use was published early in her writing career.She displays the differences in the behav iors and minds of the mother and her two daughters during the process of seeking the self-consciousness of black woman from the point of view of " womanism".This paper attempts to explore the awakening of their heritage and self-consciousness in or der to deepen the understanding and thoughts on the theme of the text.     

“Only When I Am Not Ashamed of Myself Can I Teach Others”: Preservice English-Language Teachers in Vietnam and Code-Switching Practices

As the younger generation in Vietnam increasingly switches between the English and the Vietnamese languages, numerous linguistic and sociocultural strictures arise. Foregrounding the preservice English-language teachers of this generation, this article locates them in a dilemma between the discourse of globalization and their code-switching practices, on the one hand, and the moral-guide duty they are expected to fulfil within the discourse of linguistic nationalism on the other hand. Drawing on a case study conducted with survey questionnaires (N = 483) and focusing on interviews and focus groups (N = 15), this article reports the confusion, the decisions, and the negotiations made by different preservice teachers as they were faced with this dilemma. Particularly underlining the theme of negotiation, the article proposes certain changes to the English-language-teacher training curriculum in Vietnam.     

“I’m a Facilitator of Learning!” Understanding What Teachers and Students Do Within Student-Centered Physical Education Models

The role of the facilitator has become almost synonymously associated with student-centered approaches. However, how a teacher functions as a facilitator is less well defined. This article begins to define teacher action in student-centered learning environments. Through an exploration of teacher behavior, teacher–student interactions, and discussions around teacher-as-activator, the article argues that the teacher must play an active role in the classroom and should be considered much more than a “guide on the side.” Teachers should use a range of direct and indirect behaviors and dialogical exchanges to support and extend learning. These actions and interactions should be contextually relevant and aligned with the learning aims of the student-centered approach. In suggesting that facilitation provides a narrow perspective on teacher action, the article calls for further consideration around teacher-as-activator to consider the teacher as someone who activates new learning possibilities.