Teacher Ideology, Agency, and the Social Reproduction of Black Males

• In Event: Reframing Race and Gender: Perspectives on Black Male Achievement

Abstract

This study examines highly respected teachers of Black male students in a U.S. secondary school setting. Using qualitative methods, the study documented teachers’ ideological understandings and their practices with Black male students. In general, teachers oscillated between discordant structural and cultural explanations of Black male social and academic outcomes. Specifically, teachers identified race as a structural impediment for Black males in social perception and school discipline but then drew upon dominant deficit views of Black male youth culture and Black cultural capital to explain Black male (under)achievement. Despite the incongruent nature of these explanations, the teachers demonstrated agency in engaging in educational practices of resistance that contested the social reproductive nature of schooling for Black males.

Author

• Quaylan Allen, Chapman University