This article argues that the intersection of invention and style is a rich site for rhetorical study, for amplification, and for critical-creative tinkering, a process of writing new versions of an old text. At this intersection, writers can tinker to amplify an existing text and thus work to continue or begin anew the inventive process. To…

This article centers on freedom dreaming as a critical approach to educational policy studies. I examined how one Black and Indigenous American educator activist collective's conversations linked freedom dreaming to critical praxis. Educational policy studies would benefit from centering on Black and Indigenous knowledges especially if scholars…

The story of John Henry, dating back to the late nineteenth century, is one of the most enduring folktales of American culture. As the legend goes, John Henry was an African American "steel-driving man" whose job was to drive spikes through rocks in the construction of a railroad tunnel. So powerful was John Henry that he defeated a…

Black students face hyper-disciplining and high levels of social control when they enter American schools. The cultural mismatch hypothesis attempts to explain this hyper-disciplining by arguing that the mostly White teaching force misinterprets the attitudes and behaviors of Black students, which leads to their hyper-disciplining. Utilizing a…

The purpose of this conceptual article is to illustrate how our awakening after Nipsey Hussle's death, our visit to his memorial, his music and life, and our lived experiences influenced a redesign of our community-engaged courses. We realized we had bought into respectability politics and prioritized making our white colleagues and preservice…

Because racism is permanently woven into the fabric of American society, the fight for Black equality and liberation is a constant struggle of resistance. Traditionally, a strong method of resistance utilized by oppressed people has been the use of language. Language is a form of symbolic power, a political force utilized to empower those who make…

As a subset of culturally sustaining pedagogy, ethnic pedagogies enlarge the repertoire of teachers addressing the instructional needs of many different students. Specific descriptions with grade 5-12 instructional illustrations are provided for call-and-response learning approach from the African-American religious tradition and havruta, which is…

Contemporary political and cultural realities make the renegotiating of African American cultural images an urgent matter. A recent movement to improve the position of African Americans in the movie business has produced a new wave of debates. Current movies show a variety of approaches to defining those images. The success of "Green…

The author, a dance instructor, embraced the energy and culture of Hip Hop when she started dancing back in the late 1980s and early 90s. However when invited to teach Hip Hop dance for a newly revived dance minor in 2011, she had her concerns because her Hip Hop instruction in various settings previous to this invitation left her a bit…

Grounded in the Black intellectual tradition, this article explores how Black youth and teachers of Black youth operationalize resistance ideologies to combat hegemonic narratives about Black youth in U.S. urban school spaces. Using data from four Black youth and teacher participants, we applied a priori coding based on Bernard and Agozino's…

I first describe the Black scholarly dilemma to set up the reader for how spirit murder happens subtly and the ways, I argue, centering Black life can restore our spirits. Through meditating on the existing literature, I argue that exclusion and marginalization are not the primary indicators of spirit murder in the education field or the academy.…

Scholars, educators, writers, and librarians have been calling for richer literary depictions of Black culture since the 1930s. Using a critical content analysis framework with the books "Ada Twist, "Scientist" and "Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut," I discuss how the concepts of fugitivity, fantasy, futurity, and freedom…

Grandmothers are often referred to as the spiritual learners and leaders within families and often pass their religious teachings on to their children and grandchildren. This qualitative study investigated learning and human capital development among rural African American grandmothers (n = 10) caring for their grandchildren. The findings revealed…

Using the Connected Learning framework as a conceptual lens, this study utilises interviews and focus groups to explore classroom outcomes of and Hip-Hop Music Education programme piloted within two predominantly African American urban elementary schools. Three specific themes that emerged within post-program discussions with participants were…

While adolescent foundational skills interventions can be critical levers for reading improvement, district leaders, teachers, and researchers must make complex decisions about how to evaluate their effectiveness in context. In this discussion article, we explore three issues and tensions we experienced during a 2-year research-practice…