Teacher education scholars have long used the literary device of metaphor to describe the work of teachers. Metaphors offer colorful descriptions about the teacher and the profession of teaching. What also undergirds the use of metaphors about teaching is the underlying philosophies about the purpose of the teacher and teaching. We argue however,…

Since the 1990s numerous scholars have highlighted a variety of diverse and complex issues impacting the education of Black males. Interestingly however, the public discourse about Black males in the news media and educational discourse tend to still report the experiences of Black males in one dimensional ways, not accounting for the complexity…

Drawing from the work of "cultural memory" and "racial formation theory" (Omi and Winant 1994) we explore the ascension of Barack Obama as an illustration of how "race" is understood and remembered. This article focuses on the public media discourse of the 2012 Obama re-election to illustrate how the narrative morphed…

Drawing from the theories of racial formation theory and race marking, this chapter explores the durability of racial discourses in school curriculum over time in the United States. The authors' inquiry focuses on racial discourses located in two sources of curricula knowledge: children's literature and U.S. history textbooks.

The intent of this paper is to interrogate the current theoretical discourse in education concerning issues of race and class. The authors maintain that in recent years educational theory and critical policy discourse have unintentionally become splintered in such a way that race and class theories are employed separately, without much analysis of…

Drawing from Michel Foucault's notion of "useful" and "dangerous" discourse coupled with the theory of racial knowledge, this article examines how two common counter-discourses about African-American students operate and create racial knowledge in education practice. By "counter-discourse", the authors refer to knowledge, theories, and histories…

This article explores the theoretical implications around positioning the Black male teacher as the central agent of social change for Black male students. In addressing such concerns, my intention is not to discourage efforts to recruit and retain more African American men as teachers, but to trouble the commonsense assumptions embedded in such…

This article examines the Black male crisis thesis promulgated by the social science literature, public policy, and mainstream discourse, respectively. The authors contend that the stock-story that the majority of African American males are "at-risk" for engaging in self-destructive behavior or on the verge of extinction perpetuates a discourse of…

Background/Context: Over the last three decades, considerable attention has been given to the social and educational conditions of Black males. Such observations have led to the accusation that Black males are "in crisis." Although such pronouncements call national attention to the needs of Black males, these discourses have helped to normalize…

Since the early 1990s, several researchers have found that African American teachers who are successful with African American students hold deep philosophical commitments to the concept of "social justice". While these scholars have convincingly articulated how "social justice" is a central feature of African American teachers' success with…

This article examines how African American scholars during the early twentieth century employed the genre of curriculum writing to challenge existing discourses of race. Drawing from the findings of a qualitative document analysis of textbooks created by Carter G. Woodson and Charles H. Wesley, this article illustrates how these authors used texts…