Documenting a History of Black Teachers-as-Researchers

• In Event: Excavating Black Teacher Historiographies and the Necessity of Archival Justice Work in Advancing Educational Equity

Abstract

Each year, millions of Black people living in America celebrate Black History Month and thousands of teachers prepare lessons focusing on primary figures of the movements for Black liberation, education, and civil rights. Unfortunately, within the historiographies of teacher practices, little is known about Black teachers during the early 20th century researching Black history and the critical practices utilized to re-present their findings within their instructional practices remains unearthed, buried in the Colored Teachers Association journals (Muhammad, 2022; Muhammad & Love, 2020; Broughton, 2022). Despite the widely recognized need for research on Black teacher practices (Milner, 2017), the tools often used to excavate these critical counter-narratives act as vestigates of coloniality (Patel, 2015; Ewing, 2018) and continue to produce narratives of sameness the age of scrapping bots and artificial intelligence (Islam et. al, 2023). To disrupt this narrative, and explore new tools for critical historiographies, a conceptual culturally-responsive approach to archival research is introduced and applied to analyze data from the Colored Teachers Association journals of the state of Texas, Maryland, and Virginia. This novel approach affords new opportunities to explore counter-narratives in historical teacher research and practices through mixed methods and modalities to draw forth new meanings, stories, and mapping critical research (Apple, Wu, & Gandin, 2009). This presentation understands critical research to not only deepen our understanding of the history of Black teacher practices, but it goes beyond what King (1995) notes as “a systemic examination of scholarship that addresses ideological influence on knowledge in curriculum and education practice, particularly with regard to the education of Black people,” (p. 270). Dialogic interviews (Harvey, 2015), narrative analysis (Aldridge & Aldridge, 2008) and historical voices listening parties (Muhammad et. al, 2020) were employed as methods to cross-reference practices over time and track practices across regions and convening. A preview of the analysis and discussion of future research will insight implications from the fields of history of education, teacher movements, curriculum studies, and teacher practices.

Author

• Abdul-Qadir D. Islam, Teachers College, Columbia University