A Critical Essay on Black Male Teacher Recruitment Discourse

ABSTRACT

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 are interested in how wider discourses about Black male youth are tied to longstanding histories about the sociology of the Black family, which inform recruitment discussions about Black male teachers.

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Notes on contributors

Anthony L. Brown

Anthony L. Brown is Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research agenda examines how educational stakeholders make sense of and respond to the educational needs of African American male students. Additionally, he examines how school curriculum depicts the historical experiences of African Americans in official school knowledge (e.g. standards and textbooks) and within popular discourse.

Daniel J. Thomas

Daniel J. Thomas III is a PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the intersection between historical discourses of race and the contemporary experiences of African American male teachers and boys. His work has also been published in Race Ethnicity and Education. DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2020.1798