Exposing Routes: African American Women Teachers Teaching Abroad

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: Migration and Mobility

Proposal

I am a third-year doctoral student in the Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. My advisor is Dr. Roozbeh Shirazi. The submission and oral defense of my special paper, a critical review of the literature within my scholarly interest, will occur on December 11, 2018. After passing, my prospectus meeting will occur in January 2019. I anticipate data collection between February and June 2019.

“When I was in the states, I always had to work two jobs, I never had to work two jobs here… the quality of life here is much better.” Ms. Karen is an African American teacher who has worked in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) for the past nine years. I interviewed her during my pilot study in the U.A.E. during the summer of 2018. This ethnographic dissertation uses the U.A.E. as a case study to investigate the motivations and experiences of African American women, formerly pk-12 public teachers, that left the United States (U.S.) and are currently teaching abroad.

The study of African American women teachers that teach abroad is emerging as a critical and timely issue within education. African American teachers are in great demand. Yet, policy interventions that emphasize recruitment, retention, and diversification appear to be ineffective as African American teachers remain significantly underrepresented in U.S. schools. The significance of this research is situated in a puzzle. On one hand, U.S. school leaders express a need to recruit and retain African American teachers. On the other, African American teachers remain underrepresented in U.S. schools and are instead, choosing to leave the U.S. education system for teaching opportunities abroad. The overlying question, Why do African American women teachers choose to teach abroad, is joined by three sub-questions. One, what motivators encourage African American women teachers to migrate from U.S. schools to seek teaching opportunities abroad? Two, what are the lived experiences of African American women teachers that are teaching abroad? Three, how does race impact African American women teacher experiences abroad?

These questions provide a basis for an in-depth investigation to understand the personal and professional experiences that African American teachers face in U.S. schools and in U.S. society. It extends the research of scholars with a focus on the exodus of African American teachers and teacher attrition studies. The answers to these questions provide a narrative to teachers’ decision to leave the U.S. education system. They also provide a comparison of their personal and professional experiences in U.S. society and schools to those of the U.A.E.

My dissertation expects readers to understand that African American women teachers are suffering in U.S. schools and in U.S. society. What was once a prestigious career choice, for young Black women from working-class families, has developed into an institution that reproduces negative racialized experiences and isolation for African American teachers. African American teachers have historically been pushed out of U.S. schools. Current explanations from teacher attrition studies that suggest a lack of quality teachers and few African American teachers entering teacher preparation programs, do not sufficiently explain the diminutive amount of African American teachers in the teacher workforce. From 1987 to 2012, the teacher workforce became more diverse and minority teachers accounted for nearly 20% of the approximate 3.8 million public school teachers in America. During this same time, the percentage of African American teachers decreased from 7.5% to 6.5% (Ingersoll & Merrill, 2017). This 10% decrease confirms that African American teachers are entering the U.S. education system, however, for various reasons, they are exiting in disproportionate numbers.

This ethnographic dissertation is of a qualitative design and employs oral history, interviews, participant observations, and journaling as methods for data collection. I use critical race theory (CRT) and intersectionality as a theoretical grounding for this investigation. CRT focuses on the intersection of race, racism, and power (Bell, 1992). Delgado and Stefancic (2017) suggest that racism is ordinary and is the usual way society does business. Intersectionality engages with CRT and furthers our understanding of “how differences such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and age intersect” within the narratives of these women’s lives (Beck, 1992). Participant selection consists of 30 self-identified African American women educators working in public and private schools in Ras Al Khaimah and Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. Each participant will possess a state certified teaching certificate and at a minimum, one year of teaching experience in a public or private school within the U.S. The participants will be of various ages and posses various years of U.S. and international teaching experiences.

References
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.

Bell, D. (1992). Faces at the bottom of the well. USA: Basic Books.

Bhopal, K., & Preston, J. (2012). Intersectionality and ''race'' in education. New York: Routledge.

Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical race theory an introduction (3rd ed). New York: New York University Press.

Ingersoll, R., and Merrill, L. (2017). A quarter century of changes in elementary and secondary teaching force: From 1987 to 2012. Statistical analysis report (NCES 2017-092). U.S. Department of Education. Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch.

Reilly, K. (2018, September). This is what it’s like to be a teacher in America. TIME. Retrieved from http://time.com/longform/teaching-in-america/

Author

• Tiffany Lachelle Smith, University of Minnesota