How Historically Black College/University Faculty Draw From Humanizing Critical Sociocultural Knowledge to Inform How They See Themselves as Professors, What They Teach, and How They Teach

• In Event: Teachers Accepting Educational Responsibility by Foregrounding Humanizing Critical Sociocultural Knowledge Across K–16 Classrooms

Abstract

This research explores and explains how HBCU first-year seminar faculty draw from a sociocultural knowledge that informs how they read and understand their students as they make curriculum decisions. This study captures how first-year faculty that came from diverse fields of professional expertise and demographic backgrounds drew from a humanizing critical sociocultural knowledge to develop curriculum in improvisational ways that are responsive to and situated in the lived experiences of their HBCU students.

Brown asserts that learning emerges within contextualized ways of knowing and being that inform how we see ourselves as teachers, what we teach, and how we teach. Hence, teachers must have a humanizing critical sociocultural knowledge of the oppressive ways that schools have functioned and operated for their students and the communities they come from. AuthorThree’s discussion will focus on how “sociocultural context frames the history and contemporary practices of teaching” (Brown, 2013, p. 332). As such, AuthorThree’s paper will highlight the ways that the faculty approached teaching with the understanding of how sociopolitical conditions, historical and spatial context, inform each teaching moment. Brown’s HCSK is particularly applicable because it challenges educators to reflect on for what reasons and to whose benefit they are making curricular or pedagogical decisions.

A narrative inquiry was used to illustrate how sociocultural knowledge informed the curriculum decisions of first-year seminar faculty. AuthorThree explores qualitative data collected from the stories of 10 HBCU first-year seminar faculty that teach a six different HBCUs in Texas. A series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture how their sociocultural knowledge informed their curricular decisions. Their stories revealed how they made meaning of their students' cultural and educational experiences and how their sociocultural knowledge informed their approach to and decisions about their curriculum.

This research illustrates how the HBCU faculty made meaning of their students' cultural backgrounds and K-12 educational experiences by: (1) drawing from their learned and lived experiences; (2) formal and informal conversations with their students; and (3) through class journals, assignments, and projects. The author explains how the participants negotiated the “dominant” understandings of their students' cultural backgrounds and educational experiences. While the purpose of the study was not to generalize about their students' cultural backgrounds and educational experiences, AuthorThree identifies a sociocultural knowledge of their students’ engagement with critical thinking, culturally relevant curriculum, and community-based learning as salient themes that emerged from the data. AuthorThree then demonstrates how the emergent themes informed their approach to and decisions about their curriculum.

Author

• Gina English Tillis, The University of Memphis