Unique Needs and Opportunities: Examining Motivation, Persistence, and Resistance Among Black Male Preservice Teachers

• In Event: 28.049 - Preparing African American Teacher Candidates to Enact Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Lessons From a Historically Black College/University

Abstract

Through an examination of the academic and social experiences of Black male pre-service teachers, this study sheds light on the challenges, successes, resilience and resistance among Black male students in an undergraduate teacher education program. It reveals their motivations to teach, philosophies of teaching and pedagogical approaches that may be unique to this population. In doing so, this study contributes to the existing literature on teacher beliefs, which all but excludes the ontologies, epistemologies, and pedagogies of Black male pre-service teachers.

Given the failure of teacher preparation programs to attract and retain Black male students, and the implications that the shortage of qualified teachers has on K–12 students, it is important to learn from the experiences of Black male pre-service teachers to improve the ways in which teachers of diverse cultural backgrounds are attracted into the field and prepared for work, particularly in troubled schools.

To gain a deeper understanding of participants’ experiences and pedagogical beliefs, I use Ethnographic and Critical Race Methodologies to examine the following research questions:
(a) How do Black male pre-service teachers describe and explain their political, cultural, social and personal experiences and beliefs, as individuals and as future educators?
(b) How do they understand the significance of their experiences and beliefs and the ways in which they may be related to their motivations to teach?
(c) How do these understandings inform participants’ beliefs about and approaches to their teacher education course work education, practicum experiences and effectiveness as a future educator?

I borrow from Foster’s (1997) research on Black teachers in which she relied on a set of topics to guide her interviews rather than a list of interview questions. This method of interviewing supports Ethnographic Methodology and calls for a more conversational rather than didactic style of interviewing (Dhunpath, 2000; Goodson, 2001). For this study, I use similar interviewing strategies and situate each interview within a specific theme.

Participants are ten Black male undergraduate teacher education students at various stages of their course work. Both Ethnographic and Critical Race methodologies demand in-depth investigations from multiple perspectives. As such, a limited sample size allows me to conduct comprehensive and in-depth analyses of the data.

I use purposeful sampling to identify participants in which, according to Bogdan & Biklen, “you choose particular subjects to include because they are believed to facilitate the expansion of the developing theory.” I contacted, through personal conversations, email, and phone class, the participants for this study. I also employed snowball-sampling identify potential participants (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007).

Author

• Thurman L. Bridges, Morgan State University