This qualitative phenomenological study addressed the underrepresentation of Black males in education by exploring the professional and lived experiences of Black male educators in urban North Carolina schools. The study utilized Critical Race Theory (CRT) to contextualize the lived experiences and persistent struggles of Black male educators and…

What's the likelihood that a student of color will have the opportunity to learn from a teacher of color? Currently, teachers of color make up approximately 18% of the United States' total teaching force. Students of color make up 54% of the total student population. Racial parity is part and parcel of a greater commitment to equity--equitable…

The purpose of this study was to characterize the last decade of Black male teacher empirical research. The present study aimed to elucidate the most salient themes, commonalities, and departures in the literature on Black male educators. A quantitative content analysis was performed to systematically characterize the research trends present in…

Despite students of color comprising over 50% of current classroom populations and the United States Census Bureau's prediction that people of color will become the "majority-minority" in the overall United States population by 2043, these trends fail to correlate with representations of educators of color in P-12 education, especially…

African American males are represented at an extremely low rate in the teaching profession across the United States. There is a need to inform all about the necessity to recruit, retain, and prepare African American males for the teaching profession. The life experiences of current African American males in the teaching field can help all gain a…

Drawing from the framework of "populational reasoning," this paper explores the implicit and explicit discourses within recruitment calls for Black male teachers. "Populational reasoning" helps to construct meaning about how students learn and the socio-psychological attributes that inform school achievement. In this sense, we…

Black male teachers possess an epistemological and pedagogical stance that is largely different from their non-color counterparts. Having a nontraditional stance can be problematic when evaluated by school leaders who hold traditional views of teaching and learning. Where many Black male preservice teachers enter the profession with desires to be…

The purpose of this study is to share how African American/Black male K-12 novice educators navigated their own educational journey to become K-12 educators in an urban school district in central Alabama. An urban school district was identified from findings from the Census Bureau and had a school that sat inside an urbanized area and inside a…

This is a study of African American male teachers' experiences in K-12 schools across multiple states and school districts. The research explores the motivation of African American male teachers to consider a career in teaching; the challenges they faced in the teacher education programs and in the classroom; their support systems that they had…

The under-representation of Black male teachers in special education has significant consequences. Historically, Black males account for the disproportionately high number of children served in K-12 special education programs (Talbert-Johnson, 2001). Often, the children are evaluated using racially-biased assessments (Cartledge & Duke, 2008).…

Based on the school to prison pipeline that has garnered a great amount of attention in the past decade, many studies have underscored the need for Black male teacher presence in schools. However, not much beyond rhetoric has taken place to change educational policy or practices. While the student body in American K-12 education has become…

Research shows that exposure to teachers of color has a positive impact on students of all races, and particularly on students of color. Despite these positive effects, only 4% of Pennsylvania's teachers are people of color. This percentage is not only one of the lowest in the nation, but it is also starkly disparate from Pennsylvania's own…

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…

African American male teachers represent a disproportionately low number of educators in the American public school system. This lack of representation has implications for understanding, interacting with and educating the growing population of students of African descent in public schools. In addition, all students benefit from experiencing…

The purpose of this article is to provide insights into the challenges in developing the Urban Community Teachers Project: a campus-based initiative to recruit and train Black male teachers for urban classrooms. The central argument is that given the enormous challenges in both recruiting and training Black male urban community teachers, the end…