While community colleges benefit from an increase in African American (AA) male students enrolling at their institutions, a disproportionate number of AA males enroll in college and do not complete a certificate or degree compared to those who earn a certificate or degree. This qualitative study explored how AA male students at community colleges…

The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to explore how intersecting discourses of race, attractional orientation, and gender expression have influenced Rashaad Calaham's experiences as a Black, openly gay, gender-fluid middle school choir director. Rather than hiding his attractional orientation and gender expression, he leans into these…

Background: Although large-scale research over the last 15 years demonstrates the positive effects of Black teachers for Black students on various student outcomes, these studies focus on average effects. This leaves space to examine classroom practices to detail how the positive effects may be realized through the everyday interactions between…

The underrepresentation of African American male teachers in K-12 education significantly impacts educational equity and student success, especially in urban areas where these students often lack relatable role models. Historically, African American males were a significant presence in teaching, but their numbers have drastically declined since…

Engineering education research has highlighted the importance of examining, understanding, and supporting teacher learning and identity development, particularly for those that hold marginalized identities. As part of the special issue on Teacher Learning and Organizational Contexts, this study examines the intricate relationship between powered…

Taking the form of three papers, this dissertation seeks to elaborate the role and experience of Black educators by shifting primary research perspective away from the classroom teacher to consider the systemic and organizational roles of racialized faculties. The first paper historicizes the 20th- and 21st-century stories of Michigan's Black…

Black educators represent a small percentage of the educator workforce. In this manuscript, we examine the institutional and leadership conditions which contribute to the liminal presence of Black women educators specifically. We nuance the discussion about Black women educators to help educational leaders gain a deeper understanding of their:…

Despite consistent evidence on the benefits of same-race instructor matching in K-12 settings and developing work in higher education, research has yet to conceptualize and document the incidence of same-race matching. That is, even if same-race matching produces positive effects, how likely are racially minoritized students to ever experience an…

In this collaborative autoethnography, we, a Mexican woman graduate student and a Black woman faculty member, engage critical family history to think reflexively about how our family histories interact with our intersectional positions as Women of Color in academia to influence how we approach teaching family science. Both participants collected…

Racial disproportions in discipline within the U.S. public school system have been documented since the 1970s and continue to grow despite decades of research and intervention. A solid base of research ruling out individual student- and family-level factors as main causes of the racial disproportions has amassed, however, deficit narratives,…

Black males leave the teaching profession higher than any other demographic. Additionally, there is a paucity of literature detailing what it will take for schools to retain and develop Black teachers according to Afrocentric epistemologies. Using Teacher Life Stories and "Psychology of Black Success" to ground the research, I explore my…

This study investigates the role of African American Language (AAL) and *Standardized American English (*SAE) in Black/African American same-race teacher-student relationships. The teachers in this study (1) used AAL as a valuable tool for building rapport and trust with their students; (2) were aware of their positions as linguistic role models;…

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the national enrollment rate for pre-k children ages 3 to 4 was 40% (a drop from 54% in 2019; National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). This is partly due to fewer children in the 0-5 age group (23.4 million of 72.8 million children in the United States in 2020; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020).…

Over the past 10 years, Black student-athletes at Division I institutions have seen their graduation rates grow from 52% in 2010 to 59% in 2020 (NCAA, 2020b). However, even with this growth, Black student-athletes still fall behind their non-Black peers and below the average student-athlete graduation rate of 69% (NCAA, 2020b), with some schools…

In an ethnographic study of one high school mathematics department made up of four African American teachers, I explored their co-construction of knowledge about teaching mathematics for social justice. This began with an in-depth study of each teacher's professional identity, their emotional connections to teaching in their local African American…