Exploring the Experience of a Black Male in a Teacher Education Doctoral Program

• In Event: 69.031 - Diversifying the Pipeline to Professor: Insights From the Grad Prep Academy

Abstract

This paper examines how researchers can benefit from acknowledging the impact of the lack of diversity within the professoriate in an effort to rebuild collegiate academic spaces fully represent the American population in hopes of cultivating more diverse voices that will influence the atmosphere of America’s educational institutions. The work presented here stems from the author’s participation in the first cohort of The Grad Prep Academy at The University of Pennsylvania (Harper & Porter, 2012) during his junior year in college, where he was introduced to the idea of pursuing a doctoral degree in the field of education. Dr. Shaun Harper and Dr. Andrew Porter of The University of Pennsylvania had the knowledge regarding the lack of Black males entering doctoral degree programs, particularly in education and opposed to further theorizing and documenting the lack of this demographic in the academy, the two decided to move to action and create a pipeline which would not only introduce young black males to the world of academia, but would also support them on their journey to and through. Despite having family members who attended college and being enrolled in a world-class undergraduate institution, prior to entering The Grad Prep Academy, the author could not have conceptualized the possibility of obtaining a PhD. Six years after finishing the program, the author is now a fourth year doctoral student at one of the leading college’s of education in the nation, where he is now conducting research with Black youth in a Philadelphia high school to ensure that they too are able to benefit from equal educational opportunities.

Through the use of autoethnography, the author uses his experiences with Grad Prep Academy as an entry point to analyze the conditions that deter Black men from pursuing doctoral education and even staying in these programs once matriculated, while simultaneously highlighting the necessity for universities to be intentional in creating pipeline programs for minority populations, such as Black males to enter the academy. As a Black male scholar in a Teacher Education program, focusing on race and literacy, the author often wondered what did he have to offer to the professional and intellectual literacy communities? He doubted himself tremendously in that the majority of graduate students in his program seeking to do literacy work are white women, who are not primarily concerned with historically marginalized communities of color and their literacy lives. However, having built a community of other Black males enrolled in PhD programs throughout country that are also persisting in predominately spaces provided him with the grounded to continue despite realities of isolation and bewilderment as to whether or not one truly belongs. Therefore, this autoethnography does not simply draw on the experiences of the author for the sake of documenting that singular experience, but rather for the purpose of extending sociological understandings (Sparkes, 2000) of Black males pursuing doctoral degrees in the field of education—a field that has been routinely documented as being hostile to Black males, particularly at the PK-12 level.

Author

• Justin Avery Coles, Michigan State University