Educate to Liberate: Exploring Educator Narratives to Examine the Mis-Education of Black Students

It is not known why the chronic mis-education of Black students has neither been adequately investigated nor treated as the most significant, widespread phenomenon of twenty-first century pedagogy. To attempt to understand this quandary, it was urgent to ask: How do Black educators understand the education of Black students? Are they able to incorporate the tensions and varied experiences they have had as students into their professional repertoire? This study described how Black educators’ unique cultural perspectives might enable increased insight into the problem of mis-education. Critical race theory framed this study with an emphasis on narrative inquiry and transformative learning. I interweaved narrative/counter-narrative and critical event research methods as both theoretical and methodological frameworks. I engaged in multi-part interviews and observations of 5 educators to explore their unique biographical narratives and analyze how their lives and teaching practices might better inform the success of Black students. Findings indicated (a) educators uniquely experienced the vestiges of mis-education as they faced insidious forms of racism during the course of their academic journey, (b) educators sought to interrupt the racism that their White teachers’ and peers exhibited, (c) educators encouraged students to use their voices and various platforms to effectively counteract their oppression, and (d) educators engaged transformative pedagogies in overt and covert ways depending on both the social and the teaching context(s). Based on the findings of this study, a liberation-based pedagogy is recommended to ensure the empowerment, increased performance, and well-rounded education of Black students