Pedagogy for partisanship: research training for Black graduate students in the Black intellectual tradition

Abstract

Current and former students of two professors in a southern research university and a community educator, all participants in an African-centered research collaborative/apprenticeship, describe what and how we study together and our struggle to use our knowledge and research in service to our community. We uplift the works of key Pan-African/Black/Africana Studies/Nile Valley scholars to illustrate the African epistemic foundation of our collaborative/apprenticeship. We describe how we utilized the methodology of narrative inquiry to explore our experiences as participants in the HeKA (Heritage Knowledge in Action) research collaborative and how HeKA has provided ways of knowing and being centered in our culture and heritage. We present our findings, which include some of the dilemmas of Black doctoral students and emerging scholars engaged in HeKA and how this collaborative/apprenticeship serves as an emancipatory praxis to enable the next generation to realize their goals of partisan research and pedagogy in higher education.

Keywords:

• Black education
• narrative inquiry
• African-centered pedagogy
• Partisan research
• higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Note

Notes

1 Amil Cabral, the Secretary General of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC), was assasintated by Portugeuese colonial agents in 1973. Under his leadership, the PAIGC liberated three quarters of the countryside of Guinea in less than 10 years of revolutionary struggle. Cabral distinguished himself among modern revolutionaries by the long and careful preparation, both theoretical and practical, which he undertook before launching the revolutionary struggle, and, in the course of preparation, became one of the world’s outstanding theoreticians of anti-imperalist struggle. See: http://www.amazon.com/Return-Source-Selected-Speeches-Amilcar/dp/0853453454

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joyce E. King

Joyce E. King holds the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair for Urban Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Georgia State University’s College of Education and Human Development where she is Professor of Educational Policy Studies. Her research focuses on the African episteme and Black/Africana Studies in curriculum transformation.

Thais M. Council

Thais M. Council is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies in the College of Education and Human Development at Georgia State University. Her scholarship focuses on multiple forms of school pushout, participatory action research with teachers and education policy.

Janice B. Fournillier

Janice B. Fournillier, PhD is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies in Georgia State University’s College of Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on teaching/learning practices in school and non school contexts, issues surrounding the use of qualitative research methodologies and authentic program evaluation.

Valora Richardson

Valora Richardson, PhD is Manager of Faculty Development and Support at Georgia State University’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and teaches in the Learning Sciences program in the College of Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on cultivating the impact of Black intellectual knowledge on the field of Learning Technology and developing culturally inclusive serious games.

Chike Akua

Chike Akua, PhD is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Clark Atlanta University. His research interests include Afrocentric and culturally relevant instructional leadership and diversifying the teacher and leadership pipeline.

Natasha McClendon

Natasha McClendon is a third-year doctoral student at Georgia State University in the Educational Policy Studies, Social Foundations program. Her research interests include institutional and student definitions of student success in higher education, higher education policies, and democracy in education.

Adrian N. Neely

Adrian N. Neely is a PhD student in the Department of Middle and Secondary Education with a concentration in Teaching and Teacher Education at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on culturally responsive school accountability measures.

Glenda Mason Chisholm

Glenda Mason Chisholm is a Teaching and Teacher Education doctoral student at Georgia State University in the College of Education and Human Development. Her research interests include literacy and Black youth and activism.

Tiffany Simpkins Russell

Tiffany Simpkins Russell, PhD is Director of Diversity and Inclusion at St. Martin’s Episcopal School in Atlanta, Georgia. She also serves as adjunct instructor in Georgia State University’s College of Education and Human Development where she teaches Multicultural Education and Sociology of Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies.

Fernanda Vieira da Silva Santos

Fernanda Vieira da Silva Santos holds a Master’s degree in Pedagogy at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil where she is a doctoral student in the Education Department. Her research, supported by the Abdias do Nascimento program in Brazil, focuses on diversity in higher education.

Mikala Streeter

Mikala Streeter is the Founding Principal of The LIFE School, an independent high school in Atlanta, GA, where students learn through passion projects and hands-on academic work.