Africentric ideas about leaders and leadership have remained part of the African Diaspora's cultural underpinnings over time. Slavery experiences predispose the African-American community to reject strong, natural leadership. This article and accompanying poem recount stories about the African-American experience and profile some true leaders.…

Examined centricity combined with Africentricity in mentoring experiences among African American students. Discusses Africentric and Eurocentric philosophies; utilizes the Mentoring Model and African principles of Nguzo Saba to develop an Africentric mentoring paradigm; examines the paradigm's role in supporting African American college students;…

Demonstrates the use of African storytelling for informal teaching of African traditions and values in today's African-American community. The instruction is shown in content and context in three literary works: "An African Night's Entertainment,""The Passport of Mallam Ilia," and "The Secret of Gumbo Grove." (MMU)

Advocates using African literature for general-education students, especially fiction with universalist themes and exploration of spiritual issues which students find engaging. Provides a four-day approach to studying Bessie Head's novel, "When Rain Clouds Gather." Presents questions and assignments. (PA)

The study of mythology that passes on stories is cultural reproduction. By focusing primarily on classical Greek and Roman mythology, teachers handicap students' ability to enter into dialogue about more diverse literature, thus limiting their ability to live more fully in today's diverse, multicultural world. A bibliographic case study of the…

Describes the kuona process of skill development, which teaches conceptualization from a cultural, political, spiritual, and liberating perspective (rooted in African culture) and fosters self reliance and self determination to promote social change in African Americans. Examines the process of conceptualization, the formation of the kuona…

This article focuses on the global and African postures on the issues of child abuse and child labour. The global ethical ideals of the issues are characterized within their various theoretical perspectives while the African cultural realities are explored through the use of focus group discussion sessions, which were organized in six rural…

This study investigates the ways in which 150 Ghanaian junior secondary students negotiate the tensions between ethnic and national history in building conceptions of democratic citizenship. While unofficial histories operate in Ghana, and some of these may be oppositional, the students in this study do not describe their own or others' ethnic…

In this article, the author describes a unit she implemented on Batik designs. This unit helped second-graders gain an understanding of the batik process while learning about mask designs and the Senegalese culture. Batik has origins in many areas around the world, including Indonesia and West Africa. This fabric-resist process involves the…

The hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and subsequent oral history projects elevated testimony as part of the South African transformation process. In this article, the author argues that testimony as oral history is important as a public forum for people who have been historically invisible. In addition, he contends that…

The Pan African Society of Musical Arts Education (PASMAE) initiated the concept of Music Action Research Teams (MAT cells) at the grass-roots level for the collaborative sharing and learning of educators throughout Africa. The current number of 27 cells in Africa is a modest realization of the society's aims. However, it is strongly felt that if…

This article discusses sexual orientation and gender expression bias as they impact the educational experience of African American students. Sexual orientation and gender expression bias have a unique presentation in Black educational settings. The climate in such settings can be metagrobolized by the combination of distorted notions of Black…

This article is on the strange confluence of culture, identity, learning, and systemic design. We argue that the work of instructional design is, essentially, work on culture and identity. A person's culture and identity fully and inextricably situate their thought, action, and interaction. For this reason, this inherent situatedness of culture…

The current study examined associations between home-school dissonance and several academic and psychological variables among 239 African American high school students. Regression analyses revealed that home-school dissonance significantly predicted multiple academic and psychological variables, including academic cheating, disruptive classroom…

The perception and organization of time are basic to the internal ordering of culture. This article demonstrates that the Akan observe precise time structures although these are largely unrecorded. Their time related institutions form a coherent system that orders life, but they are very different from those in Western perceptions. (Author/VM)