Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Faculty Experiences in the American Academy: Voices of an Invisible Black Population

Afro-Caribbean immigrants have been an integral part of the history and shaping of the United States since the early 1900s. This current study explores the experiences of five Afro-Caribbean faculty members at traditionally White institutions of higher education. Despite the historical presence and influence of Afro-Caribbean communities and the efforts within education systems to address the needs of Afro-Caribbean constituents, Afro-Caribbean faculty members continue to be rendered indiscernible in higher education and to be frequently and erroneously perceived as African–Americans. The study examines the lived experiences of these individuals in the hegemonic White spaces they occupy at their institutions with both White and Black populations. Through their narratives, issues of stereotyping, microaggression, and isolation are addressed. The participants also offer solutions to address these issues by university administrators, department heads, faculty development professionals, diversity officers, policy makers, and other stakeholders. The voices in this study shed light on an overlooked, misunderstood, and under-researched population within our faculty ranks in the American Academy.     

Linguistic and Cultural Appropriations of an Immigrant Multilingual Literacy Teacher Educator

This autoethnographic self-study describes my interpretations of multicultural awareness, with special attention to multilingual awareness (MLA), based on my interactions with 52 students in the context of two literacy courses over a period of one year. An autoethnographic self-study provided an avenue to harness my reflections on practice and to study the ways in which my practice reflected awareness of my role as an educator. Findings from my teaching videos, written responses to students, and student evaluations suggested that my communication patterns with students reflected certain elements of multicultural awareness, as displayed by my attention to individual predispositions, cultural practices and personal stereotypes. The findings also appeared to indicate that multicultural and MLA interacted to reflect facilitation and symbiosis. Facilitation seemed apparent in my awareness of differences among students’ cultures and my own as I monitored my linguistic processing. Symbiosis appeared to emanate from the recognition of how my response to individual predispositions facilitated my application of conversational strategies based on feedback. This, in turn, heightened my attention to stereotypical attitudes and behaviors. Implications for multicultural teacher education include the benefits of using autoethnographic self-study to scrutinize educators’ awareness in practice as they determine the impact of this awareness on their instructional roles in multicultural teacher education. By extension, the study suggests that autoethnographic self-study research can provide additional lenses through which to interrogate monolithic perceptions of diversity in multicultural teacher education.     

“Mr. Wang Doesn’t Really Care How We Speak!”: Responsiveness in the Practice of an Exemplary Asian-American Teacher

The Urban Review - This study presents holistic insights into the culturally relevant English language arts and reading instructional practices of one award-winning Asian-American male teacher as...     

Teaching Black Immigrant Students in Urban Schools: Teacher and Peer Relationships and Academic Performances

The Urban Review - This study examines teachers’ cultural awareness of Black immigrants and the pedagogical strategies they implemented that aided in the academic success of Black immigrant...