Young British African And Caribbean Men Achieving Educational Success

In contrast to research that focuses on the underperformance of young Black males in the British education system, the dominant notion of this volume is educational success. By aiming to understand how young, Black—notably African and Caribbean—male education plays out in different educational spaces, this book provides new insights around intersections between, and across, different structural forces and educational contexts. Examining the political, cultural, and structural factors that shape the educational journey of young Black men in the British education system, the book will cover topics such as: Race, gender, and class, and the attainment gap Contextualising Black men’s educational narratives The role of family and parenting in achieving success The role of community resource in achieving success Young British African and Caribbean Men Achieving Educational Success will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of multicultural education and gender and sexuality in education, as well as educators concerned with how Black male masculinities play out in educational discourses. Cecile Wright is Professor in the School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Nottingham, UK. Uvanney Maylor is Professor of Education in the Institute for Research in Education, at the University of Bedfordshire, UK. Thomas Pickup is a Principal Policy and Project Officer in local government in the UK.

Black Males in Secondary and Postsecondary Education contributes to the existing literature on this population with a focus on teaching, mentoring, advising, and counseling Black boys and men, from preschool to graduate/professional school and beyond into their careers.

This book presents a series of analyses of educational policies – largely in the UK, but some also in Europe – researched by a team of social scientists who share a commitment to social justice and equity in education. We explore what social justice means, in educational policy and practice, and how it impacts on our understanding of both ‘educational science’ and ‘the public good’. Using a social constructivist approach, the book argues that social justice requires a particular and critical analysis of the meaning of meritocracy, and of the way this term turns educational policies towards treating learning as a competition, in which many young people are constructed as ‘losers’. We discuss how many terms in education are essentialised and have specific, and different, meanings for particular social groups, and how this may create issues in both quantitative survey methods and in determining what is ‘the public good’. We discuss social justice across a range of intersecting social characteristics, including social class, ethnicity and gender, as they are applied across the educational policy spectrum, from early years to postgraduate education. We examine the ways that young people construct their identities, and the implications of this for understanding the ‘public good’ in educational practice. We consider the responsibilities of educational researchers to acknowledge these issues, and offer examples of researching with such a commitment. We conclude by considering how educational policy might contribute to a socially just, equitable and inclusive public good.

Sophisticated Racism: Understanding and Managing the Complexity of Everyday Racism adopts a fresh approach to the study of racism. Victoria Showunmi and Carol Tomlin identify the prevalence of sophisticated racism and explore how it manifests itself in society, particularly in the workplace. The authors narrate examples of everyday racism from the lived experiences of Black women. They take the reader on a compelling journey from the sources of racism through narratives of disquieting racist events to the destination of affirming approaches to preserving a sense of self and individual identity in the face of sophisticated racism. The authors explain how the interplay between Black women and White women originates in historical patterns of behavior which emerged on the plantations during enslavement. The term ‘White women syndrome’ has been coined to represent attempts to defend the limited space for female success by denigrating and excluding Black women. A unique feature of the book is that it reaches beyond the historical context to the provision of strategies for managing sophisticated and everyday racism in contemporary society.

In First-Generation Student Experiences in Higher Education: Counterstories, we meet eight students who attended university through an access program, and hear their stories of deciding to enter university, navigating and negotiating the institution, and bringing their university experiences with them into adult life. Their "counterstories"—drawn from application statements, weekly group meetings, diary entries, group conversations, interviews, and media reports—challenge the stereotypes commonly applied to marginalized students in higher education. Chapters offer insights into a range of salient themes and highlight the students’ strategies, challenges, successes, and trajectories, as well as their nuanced relationships with their networks, communities, families, and significant others. With this volume, James and Taylor present a valuable resource for educators, administrators, scholars, students and community agencies interested in extending understandings of first-generation university students.

This significant text employs an intersectional analysis and considers the role of queer frameworks to understand the experiences of Queer People of Color at historically white institutions of higher education in the U.S. By presenting data from student interviews and reflection journals, the book explores what it means to hold multiple minoritized identities, and asks how such intersections are navigated, contested, and experienced on college campuses. Exploring both micro- and macro-level mappings of marginalization and power, the text reveals issues including institutional erasure, pervasive whiteness in college and LGBTQ+ communities, and institutionalized racism and heterosexism, and offers in-depth insights into the material, psychological, emotional, and social impacts on queer students of color. Ultimately, the analysis highlights the necessity of employing intersectional frameworks for addressing interlocking systems of oppression and offers recommendations for the integration and support of queer students of color at historically white institutions (HWIs). This monograph will offer invaluable insights for scholars, researchers, and graduate students working in the fields of gender and sexuality, higher education, and issues of educational equity, who wish to realize the potential of intersectionality as an analytic framework for the study of identity and development of affirming educational environments.

This study critically explores contemporary African/Caribbean boys’ (15–16 years old) educational experiences in the UK. It focuses on their lives from both within and outside the school. Various research methods are employed in order to gain a comprehensive picture that includes the accounts of African/Caribbean boys, parents, teachers and youth workers. The study explores both the boys’ positive and negative experiences of school life. At one level, the boys’ narratives suggest ‘a nothing but the same old story’ of racial exclusion and subordination within urban secondary schools. At another level, we hear of the importance of education in their lives. Of particular significance is the evidence of how black supplementary schools and youth organisations are providing an educational space that positively supports them in their transition into adulthood. The study makes recommendations for educationalists and policy makers based on the findings. This includes the need to understand the boys’ experiences of racial exclusion and the complexities around the intersection of race, gender and class for a younger generation at the start of the twenty-first century. In comparing mainstream and supplementary educational spaces, the boys identify the need to build an inclusive mainstream curriculum that represents the historical past and cultural present of their lives. Importantly, the study vividly highlights contrasting teacher-pupil interactions between these two educational spaces, suggesting what the former can learn from the latter.