Black womanist teachers’ political clarity in theory and practice

Abstract

ABSTRACT Black women educators have a legacy of political clarity about teaching and learning as well as about anti-Black racism. Scholarship on Black women teachers has begun to map out this political clarity (e.g), yet is continually at risk of being devalued and deintellectualized in an educational era that privileges universalist and reductivist (e.g.“best-practices”) approaches to teaching and learning and over politically relevant forms that are relational and intergenerational, embodied and heterogeneous. Re-focusing our attention back onto the voices of Black women educators already present in educational research, this article distills their understandings of teaching and learning to honor them as womanist intellectual and pedagogical interventions designed to disrupt anti-Black racism. Their intellectual interventions offer a distinct view of teaching and learning and their pedagogical interventions cultivate the brilliance and belonging of Black youth. Understanding these interventions has implications for how we (re)conceptualize the relationships between teacher’s theories and practices of teaching and learning and engage in teacher education and development.