Black Bodies, White Spaces: Perspectives of Black Male Primary Teachers in U.K. Primary Schools

• In Event: International Perspectives of Black Male Teachers

Abstract

Little is known about the experiences of Black male teachers in the UK or about the ways in which the intersections of race, gender and class contribute to their professional identities. A paucity of research that examines teachers’ race in combination with gender and class and which directly concerns the unique position of Black male teachers, elides the perspectives of a group of teachers who are simultaneously invisible and silenced in the research literature. For Black male teachers, moving from one education space to another means that their professional identity is shaped and informed by a WhiteWorld (McKenley cited in Gillborn, 2006). For example, Black male teachers who choose to undertake a career in the primary age phase (ages 5-11 years) do so in a professional context that is white, female and middle class.

This paper draws on two case studies from an ongoing study into the experiences of Black male primary teachers in the UK (author, forthcoming). It takes place in the context of education policy reform which places schools at the heart of teacher preparation programmes and within the discursive articulation of teacher preparation programmes that are contingent upon the meritocratic ideal. The twin desire to recruit ‘well qualified’ and ‘high quality’ candidates into teaching has had the (un)intended effect of reducing the numbers of ethnic minority trainee teachers in the workforce (Ward, 2014).It is not clear from the available national data, the extent to which these reforms affect Black male participation and progression in the UK teaching profession. Notwithstanding, Black males at the start of their career and/or in the early stages, require the ability to navigate, within and between spaces of professional learning - a factor that is crucial to their success.

This qualitative account of two linked case studies, narrates the experiences of two recently qualified Black male teachers as they engage in the complexities of learning about teaching. It sheds light on the complex manoeuvres they deploy to resist, (re)present, (re)position and (re)construct hegemonic notions of the Black male.

By combining Foucault’s (2005) conceptualisation of panopticism, Judith Butler’s(2004, 2010) ideas around recognisable lives and a critical race analysis (Gillborn, 2009) of white supremacy, it illuminates the fundamental difference in perspectives between the white, feminised, middle-class education space of primary schools (unconcerned as it is with the everyday reality of its racially marked and gendered teachers), and illuminates the ways in which the regulation of Black male educators is mediated through acts of ‘othering’, policing and micro-management. Moreover, it unmasks covert structures of racial oppression. By examining the ways in which Black male teachers interact with the education system and vice versa, the paper attempts to uncover ‘the often hidden subtext of race in society’(Parker and Lynn,2002) thereby highlighting its manifestations in UK primary schools.

Author

• Christine Callender, Institute of Education - London