Bringing Black Boys Back
A look at the power of books
The Why of the Research
- “According to many standardized assessments, educators in the U.S. continually fail to advance the literacy development and academic achievement of African American male adolescents, particularly the ones who live and go to schools in high-poverty communities” (Tatum, 2008).
- One result of this failure is African American male adolescents continue to lag behind their peers in literacy.
- Another key failure in literacy research concerning African American adolescents is that when policy makers plan literacy reforms, they often do not consider research on how social processes of race, class, and gender are interwoven into literacy (Greene & Abt-Perkins, 2003; Lesko, 2000; Swasnson, Cunningham, & Spencer, 2003; Tatum, 2008).
The Problem
- These gaps in research all point to a major disparity in literacy and social justice. Not only is there is a lack of research in literacy among African American males, but researchers have failed discuss how literacy may be connected to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Leading Researchers
Dr. Alfred Tatum
Alfred W. Tatum is the Dean of the College of Education and director of the UIC Reading Clinic. Tatum's research focuses on the literacy development of African American males, particularly the roles of texts and writing to advance their literacy development. He is interested in how texts can be used as tools to preserve one's humanity. He is the author ofTeaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap, Reading For Their Life: (Re) building the Textual Lineages of African American Adolescent Males, and Fearless Voices: Engaging the Next Generation of African American Male Writers.
Michelle Alexander
Longtime civil rights advocate and litigator, Michelle Alexander won a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship and now holds a joint appointment at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Alexander served for several years as the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded the national campaign against racial profiling. At the beginning of her career she served as a law clerk on the United States Supreme Court for Justice Harry Blackmun. She lives outside Columbus, Ohio.
Dr. Pedro A. Noguera
Pedro Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University. Dr. Noguera is a sociologist whose scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions, as well as by demographic trends in local, regional, and global contexts. Dr. Noguera holds faculty appointments in the departments of Teaching and Learning and Humanities and Social Sciences at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Development. He also serves as an affiliated faculty member in NYU’s Department of Sociology. Dr. Noguera is the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. From 2008 - 2011, he was an appointee of the Governor of New York to the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees, and in 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Education.
Theoretical Underpinnings
Critical Pedagogy
- Critical pedagogy says the purpose of education is for social transformation toward a fully democratic society, where: (a) each voice is shared and heard in an equal way, (b) one critically examines oneself and one’s society and (c) one acts upon diminishing social injustices (Bercaw & Stookesberry, 2009)
- Critical pedagogy calls for an active engagement with oppressed and exploited groups (Duncan, Andradee & Morrell).
- Critical pedagogy demands that people repeatedly question their role in society as either agents of social and economic transformation or as those who participate in the asymmetrical relations of power and privilege and the reproduction of neoliberal ideology.
- Critical pedagogy lies in direct opposition to the current education landscape in the U.S.
Anatomically Complete Texts
- This relationship between the African American male and texts calls for enabling texts.
- Enabling texts go beyond cognitive focus and have a social, cultural, political, spiritual or economic focus (Tatum, 2008).
- When African American males encounter these types of texts they find it easier to make a personal connection with reading.
- These text have four common themes. They a) contribute to a healthy psyche, b) focus on a collective struggle, c) provide a road map for being, doing, and acting and d) provide modern awareness of the real world (Tatum, 2007).