Contextualizing Black Men Teacher Retention Using Researcher Reflexivity of Social Media Data and Peer Interviews

• In Event: Enduring Erasures, Radical Futures: Black Males' Survival in Education

Abstract

This study explored how life circumstances, including education, impacted retention decisions among Black Men Teachers (BMTs) who graduated from Morehouse College. The study positions the researcher and alumni participants as experts of their own stories by employing life history narratives, relational inquiry, and mixed-methods approaches to gather as well as interpret data, while at the same time interrogating me as the researcher, who is in the focal demographic and who has varying degrees of relational proximity to the study participants. These varying levels of relational proximity called for the exploration of ethical responsibilities and this paper will examine the self-study portion of the research protocols that included analyzing data from a peer interview and personal archival social media posts.

Author

• William N. Thomas, American University