What can teachers, administrators, families, and communities do to create schools that provide rich learning experiences for African American children? Based on a critical reinterpretation of several key educational frameworks, African-Centered Pedagogy is a practical guide to accomplished teaching. Murrell suggests integrating the historical, cultural, political, and developmental considerations of the African American experience into a unified system of instruction, bringing to light those practices that already exist and linking them to contemporary ideas and innovations that concern effective practice in African American communities. This is then applied through a case study analysis of a school seeking to incorporate the unified theory and embrace African-centered practice. Murrell argues that key educational frameworks—although currently ineffective with African American children—hold promise if reinterpreted.

This volume brings together leading scholars and practitioners to address the theory and practice of African-centered education. The contributors provide (1) perspectives on the history, methods, successes and challenges of African-centered education, (2) discussions of the efforts that are being made to counter the miseducation of Black children, and (3) prescriptions for—and analyses of—the way forward for Black children and Black communities. The authors argue that Black children need an education that moves them toward leading and taking agency within their own communities. They address several areas that capture the essence of what African-centered education is, how it works, and why it is a critical imperative at this moment. Those areas include historical analyses of African-centered education; parental perspectives; strategies for working with Black children; African-centered culture, science and STEM; culturally responsive curriculum and instruction; and culturally responsive resources for teachers and school leaders.

Discussing the correlation between one's self-conception and one's academic performance, this book explains African centered rites and the rituals and ceremonies behind them.

Although schools with an African-centered educational focus have existed for over 200 years, they have most often been independent institutions. Within the past few years, the idea of incorporating an African and African-American cultural orientation in public schools has been explored. This exploration has proceeded in a number of ways: in Baltimore, MD, African-centered education was instituted in selected classrooms within an otherwise traditional school. In Milwaukee, and in other cities such as Detroit, MI, and Washington, DC, African-centered programs have been implemented in selected schools.

African American Males in Education: Researching the Convergence of Race and Identity addresses a number of research gaps. This book emerges at a time when new social dynamics of race and other identities are shaping, but also shaped by, education. Educational settings consistently perpetuate racial and other forms of privilege among students, personnel, and other participants in education. For instance, differential access to social networks still visibly cluster by race, continuing the work of systemic privilege by promoting outcome inequalities in education and society. The issues defining the relationship between African American males and education remain complex. Although there has been substantial discussion about the plight of African American male participants and personnel in education, only modest attempts have been made to center analysis of identity and identity intersections in the discourse. Additionally, more attention to African American male teachers and faculty is needed in light of their unique cultural experiences in educational settings and expectations to mentor and/or socialize other African Americans, particularly males.

This book legitimizes the need for African-centered education at an early age in child development.

The Afrocentric Praxis of Teaching for Freedom explains and illustrates how an African worldview, as a platform for culture-based teaching and learning, helps educators to retrieve African heritage and cultural knowledge which have been historically discounted and decoupled from teaching and learning. The book has three objectives: To exemplify how each of the emancipatory pedagogies it delineates and demonstrates is supported by African worldview concepts and parallel knowledge, general understandings, values, and claims that are produced by that worldview To make African Diasporan cultural connections visible in the curriculum through numerous examples of cultural continuities––seen in the actions of Diasporan groups and individuals––that consistently exhibit an African worldview or cultural framework To provide teachers with content drawn from Africa’s legacy to humanity as a model for locating all students––and the cultures and groups they represent––as subjects in the curriculum and pedagogy of schooling This book expands the Afrocentric praxis presented in the authors’ "Re-membering" History in Teacher and Student Learning by combining "re-membered" (democratized) historical content with emancipatory pedagogies that are connected to an African cultural platform.