Drawing from a conceptual framework grounded in Black critical theories, this qualitative case study explored the youth knowledge that two Black Male social studies teacher-coaches serving in urban Catholic high schools acquired through Black counterpublics to reconceptualize the ontological limitation of Black existence. Findings demonstrated that it was within civic spaces generated within the Black family and community that participants acquired the socio-cultural knowledge to see through antiBlack forms of White projection.

In this paper, we utilize the concepts of racial knowledge and subjective understanding to demonstrate how the metaphor of surrogacy encodes a racialized discourse via the epistemic authority of social science research. Taken together, we demonstrate how the pervasive use of surrogacy as a metaphor reflects the subjective understanding of Black male teachers produced through the racial knowledge of social science discourse. We argue that the metaphor of surrogacy has become so unquestioningly ubiquitous throughout education and popular culture that it has become the default conceptual framework regarding all reforms for Black young men and boys.

Purpose This study aims to stimulate scholarly attention and practical application pertaining to individuals recognized as “Docs.” Through conducting a comprehensive analysis and acquiring a profound understanding of its many connotations, the objective is to shift attitudes and approaches concerning those who are seen to possess knowledge and value within society. Design/methodology/approach For this study, culturally relevant pedagogies were used as theoretical frameworks in addition to Sankofa and concept explication being used as methodologies. Findings The authors identified three themes: (1) honorary cultural practice-community nomination of “professahs” and “docs,” (2) (Black) robinhoods – cultural signifiers of distinction and relatability and (3) docs as catalysts – elevating community via consciousness, trust and mentorship as significant understandings of this distinction. Originality/value The study emphasizes the importance of “Docs” in both academic and social contexts. The role of “Docs” serves to alleviate potential conflicts of being a Black intellectual. This study further reveals the ways in which Docs align with, promote or possibly undermine established frameworks of thought. Finally, this study provides institutions with opportunities to consider strategies for the utilization, recognition and integration of individuals who are frequently overlooked or undervalued.

Background/Context: Historical narratives and contemporary research continue to produce scholarship on teacher-coaches through a White racial frame that both reifies a Western European origin story and centers the experiences of White males. However, the American history of teacher-coaches is not the Black history of teacher-coaches. The Black male teacher-coach tradition is anchored in the utilization of Black intellectual thought to implement revisionist ontology projects that simultaneously claim Black personhood and contest curricular genocide while being consumed within an anti-Black milieu. In this study, the tradition of Black male teacher-coaches' critical civic engagement within secondary schools is taken from the margins and centered.Purpose/Objective/Research Questions/Focus of Study: This study examines how Black male teacher-coaches utilize Black intellectual thought within secondary social studies and literature courses to combat a White-controlled epistemic order of knowledge. Within their courses, the participants purposefully challenge institutional forms of bad faith by utilizing Black intellectual thought to unsettle the coloniality of truth to challenge the existing anti-Black scholastic order of knowledge. Using the theoretical lenses of subjective understanding and bad faith, this study is guided by the following primary research question: How do Black men in predominantly non-Black schools utilize Black intellectual thought to enact their work as teacher-coaches?Research Design: The findings from this study emerge from an instrumental multiple case study that included four Black male teacher-coaches serving as secondary social studies or literature educators in schools that were not predominantly Black. Employing an interpretive approach within this methodology created space to redress the following two broader external interests: (1) de-essentializing the specificity of the Black male teacher-coach tradition from a Eurocentric dominant narrative, and (2) explicating the salience of Black intellectual thought in the counterhegemonic practices of these Black men relative to anti-intellectual tropes about teacher-coaches in general.Findings/Results: Findings indicate how participants continue the legacy of the long Civil Rights Movement by utilizing Black intellectual thought to enact a project of revisionist ontology to combat an anti-Black epistemic order of knowledge. The study explicates the following thematic findings: (1) carving out space for Black intellectual thought, (2) centering Black intellectual thought, and (3) making Black intellectual thought relevant.Conclusions/Recommendations: Findings from this study illustrate how Black teachers in general, and Black male teacher-coaches in particular, serve as the gatekeepers and guardians of Black intellectual thought within predominantly non-Black secondary schools. Participants who were secondary social studies and literature teachers resisted a White-controlled epistemic order that marginalizes Black intellectual thought. These findings have direct implications for secondary preservice teachers with the desire to courageously enact fugitive pedagogical practices to include diverse, antiracist curricular materials.

One justification given by social studies teachers for avoiding teaching or incorporating race into their lessons is the absence of race from textbooks. Given that textbooks continue to play a significant role in social studies instruction, the authors analyzed how Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, a Black scholar of the early twentieth century, accounted for race in two of the textbooks he wrote for K–12 teachers. In this essay, we used the principles of Black Critical Patriotism as a framework to analyze two of Woodson's textbooks—The Negro in Our History and Negro Makers of History. We concluded with a discussion regarding potential limitations while emphasizing the place for Woodson's textbooks within social studies classrooms.Keywords: Black educationBlack critical patriotismcitizenship educationCarter G. Woodson Notes1 In this paper, the terms "African Americans" and "Black" are used interchangeably.2 Colonel Charles Young was on October 6, 2021 posthumously promoted to Brigadier General, a rank in which he qualified and deserved but was unable to obtain due to his forced early medical retirement from the United States Army (Harrison, Citation2022).3 Specifically, leveraging Woodson's' books below we offer support in the social studies learning objectives of: primary source examination, historical inquiry, and interpretation. After each chapter of Negro Makers of History, Woodson gave teachers "Hints and Questions," as was mentioned before in the text. We specifically make suggestions for how some of the included questions closely align with the teaching of Black critical patriotism, even though the info included below just scratches the surface of what Woodson included in those areas. This list is not all-inclusive, though, as the chapters had numerous additional alignments with the three tenets.

This paper explores how Grow Your Own (GYO) educator initiatives can mitigate the pressing teacher shortage by unpacking the nature of the shortage and key factors of recruitment and retention. GYO proposes a solution by specifically targeting districts that often report the most frequent shortages: urban and rural schools. Our approach to recruitment expands the teacher pipeline and strives for retention by offering a strategy that capitalizes on asset-based community development and notions of heart work to assist in removing barriers that historically have kept Black, Latinx, Asian and other communities from pursuing teaching careers. Recommendations outline several current grant funding opportunities that can be utilized to establish a GYO, and encourage the exploration of partnerships with community-based organizations.

Purpose This study explores the value of sports films for engaging youth in issues related to patriotism, justice, equity and liberty. The authors analyze how two sports films, 42 and Battle of the Sexes , have pedagogical potential and value in secondary social studies methods classes, as well as what criteria educators might use when selecting films (and television series) for classroom use. Design/methodology/approach Using content analysis, the authors respond to the following questions: (1) What critical themes related to civic education surface in the sports films 42 and Battle of the Sexes ? and (2) What framework might guide the use of selecting sports films and sports film clips for educators' civic educational use? Findings Five themes surfaced in the films 42 and Battle of the Sexes : economics as a force for social change; racism and anti-Blackness, athletes as more than athletes, resisting oppression, and sexism and homophobia. Instruction related to these themes has the potential to engage students in critical, awareness-based approaches to civic education. Originality/value Sports films show promise for engaging youth due to their interests in the medium of film and in sports, both as participants and spectators. Across the world, athletes face questions and issues related to patriotism, justice, equity and liberty on courts, fields, tracks and rinks, These questions and issues are deeply embedded in civic education. This study is among the first of its kind to explore the pedagogical potential of sports films.

Historically, there have been many instances where Black student-athletes utilized activism to be change agents within athletics and the broader society. This article utilizes Harry Edward's four waves of Black athlete activism as historical context for legal and political activism as contemporary and future protest strategies among Black student-athletes. Likewise, we use racial formation theory as a theoretical context to do the same. Finally, after the historical and contemporary analyses, we offer a discussion and conclusion for legal and political activism as enduring racial projects for Black student-athletes.

Fostering a sense of civic engagement is considered an essential purpose of social studies education. However, given the ways in which formal civic curricula and standards decenter the impact of racial membership on civic status, Black teachers are turning to alternative, out-of-school sites to enact critical approaches to teaching civics. Interscholastic athletics serves as one locale for such revisionist practices. This multiple case study troubles the centrality of Whiteness and deficit notions within the teacher-coach discourse by explicating the civic practices of five Black male teacher-coaches who served in schools that were not predominantly Black. Drawing on a conceptual framework rooted in Black critical theories, their civic mindedness of coaching ideologies and civic-oriented activities fostered a sense of liberatory fantasy while immersed within an anti-Black milieu.

This article explores how Black male teachers in Hollywood films continue to be encoded with meanings derived from deficit social science discourse generated through a white-controlled epistemic order. Drawing from the framework of critical public pedagogy and utilizing the critical visual cultural tradition, we contend that the representation of Black male teachers on film is rooted in longstanding conceptual narratives of Black men and boys. Findings indicate that cinematic films both develop their scripts around and contextualize the necessity of Black male teachers within deficit sociological tropes of absent Black fathers and their endangered sons.

Black experiences and discourse concerning citizenship are unique. Moreover, Black access to full citizenship is often a matter of life and death. The civic purposes driving this pursuit are often negated in conventional curriculum and pedagogy, especially in early childhood settings. Still, it is essential for educators and policymakers to understand the civic purposes that initiate and sustain civic engagement. The purpose of this study is to amplify the voices of young Black boys in regards to US citizenship. By employing notions of in the wake/wake work as the theoretical framework and curricular and pedagogical resuscitation (CPR) as the methodology, this study unearthed the power of children to examine the complexities and ironies of citizenship. More so, these first- and second-grade students linked Black citizenship to fundamental issues of life, death, and purpose. Ultimately, the authors call for instruction reflecting how for students, especially Black students, honorable civic purposes striving for full citizenship remain valued, respected, and enduring.

Private high schools are often viewed as bastions of scholastic and social opportunities, but the cost of tuition has rendered these sites predominantly white and more segregated than public schools. However, with the ability to recruit, Black boys have become prime targets of predominantly white private Catholic high schools seeking promising student-athletes. As a result, the population of Black boys at these schools are composed almost entirely of students recruited to play a sport. Drawing from qualitative interview data, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the racialized experiences of six Black boys who attended a predominantly white Catholic high school in which the entire Black population was composed of student-athletes. Findings indicate that participants initially saw the private Catholic school as an escape from their respective public schools but realized that mere attendance did not result in total inclusion. All six participants encountered forms of antiblackness via frequent structural and cultural assaults that made their daily attendance at the school difficult.

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.