Our Truths: Interrogating Black Male Teaching and Teacher Education Experiences for Consequential Changes

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Anti-Blackness and Black suffering (Dumas, 2016) are apparent in US society. Specifically, teaching and teacher education are complicit in perpetuating racial harms, with impacts on Black male life. Through critical autoethnographic approaches (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Ellis & Bochner, 2000), five Black male teacher educators inquired into their experiences across P-16+ Historically White Institutions (HWIs). The studies in this session highlight anti-Blackness at HWIs, but also demonstrate our visions for teaching and teacher education. Although the findings from each study underscored the harms experienced in teaching and teacher education, they also celebrated the competencies of Black males thriving in a system not designed for our success. The findings have multiple implications for interrogating consequential education research in pursuit of truth.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 03: Teachers’ Lives, Identities, and Journeys

Chair

• Marlon C. James, Prairie View A&M University

Papers

• Finding My T(t)ruth(s): Re-Membering Using African Diaspora Literacy - Jarvais Jackson, Georgia Southern University

• Things Are Not as They Appear: The Early Experiences of an African American K–12 Science Teacher - Chaz Stigers, Texas A&M University

• A Black Male Doctoral Student's Critical Praxis in Military Connectedness - Willie C.J. Harmon, American Institutes for Research

• Teaching While Black: Breaking Fallow Ground at a Historically White University - Kevin L. Jones, Stephen F. Austin State University

• Additional(ly) Antiblack: Interrogating Optional Responses in a Black Male Teacher Educator's Student Evaluations - Shawn S. Savage, University of North Carolina - Wilmington

Discussant

• Ramon Goings, University of Maryland - Baltimore County