Teaching and Learning of African American Students as Cultural Activity: Creating Robust Ecologies of Learning in Oakland

• In Event: 14.023 - Cultural and Ecological Approaches to Understanding and Designing for Resilience, Motivation, and Engagement

Abstract

Research has long documented the racialized challenges that African American students, boys in particular, face in schools (Noguera, 1996; Howard, 2008; Nasir, ross, deRoyston, Givens, & Bryant, 2013). However, pedagogy rarely takes up race explicitly, especially in an era of market-based, neoliberal educational reforms (Nasir, Scott, Trujillo, & Hernandez, 2014). This paper examines culturally-based interventions geared towards the teaching of African American students in two kinds of district-wide initiatives in a large, urban school district. The first is a race and gender- specific initiative, the Office of African American Male Achievement (AAMA), which developed all-Black, all-male manhood development classes in district middle and high schools. We examine the nature of teaching, learning, and teacher-student relationships in these classes. The second is the districts’ Strategic Plan, a document that encouraged the development of community schools with a focus on equity, and promoted a high value on effective teaching of the most vulnerable student populations. We examine how schools that were successful in creating productive learning ecologies (Barron, 2004) for African American students drew on the strategic plan document, and how they enacted policies, practices, and educational philosophies at the school and classroom levels to do so. The research sought to elucidate the ways that school and district reform efforts geared toward creating better learning experiences for African American students engaged with students, made high quality instruction available, addressed issues of racial inequality and racialization, and engaged with community members and families.

This paper draws on data from two linked studies. The first was a 3-year study of the Manhood Development classes, which consisted of bi-weekly observation in 5 Manhood Development classrooms over a 2-year period, and student interviews (n=48), surveys (n=275) and instructor interviews (n=4). In the second study, we conducted whole school case studies of eight schools (2 elementary, 3 middle, and 3 high schools) with included observation at the school and classroom levels, and interviews with administrators, teachers, parents, and students.

Findings highlight several dimensions of productive learning ecologies: 1) they draw on a shared mission on the part of teachers and school and district administrator, and attend to creating supportive and engaging experiences for students, 2) they explicitly counter dominant ideologies and practice, and intentionally support student identities, 3) they frame students as needing and being deserving of protection, in order to mitigate risks of racialized harm present in the schools, 4) they hold in tension framing parents both as problems to be overcome, and as resources to be incorporated.

This paper builds on research literature that attends not only to the cognitive dimensions of learning, but also to identity, interpersonal interaction, and the ways that learning arrangements are cultural and racialized and are tied to school and district structures and philosophies (Nasir, 2012, Nasir, et, al. 2014; Polman & Miller, 2010). In the tradition of Henry Trueba, we make a contribution towards understanding the cultural dimensions of learning (Lee, 2007), and towards designing effective learning contexts for youth from marginalized groups (Vossoughi & Gutiérrez, in press).

Authors

• Nailah Suad Nasir, University of California - Berkeley

• Maxine Ramona McKinney de Royston, University of Pittsburgh