Black male teachers as role models: Resisting the homogenizing impulse of gender and racial affiliation

Abstract

This article reports on research with one Black male elementary school teacher in Toronto and draws on feminist, queer, and antiracist analytic perspectives to raise important questions about the discourse of teachers as role models. The voice of this teacher is used to challenge discourses about role modeling in their capacity to address adequately the limits imposed by both cultural and structural problems experienced by minority boys in urban school communities. Important questions about the role of teachers as transformative or organic intellectuals are also raised. A case study approach is employed to draw attention to both important pedagogical issues and the limits of role modeling as a conceptual framework that continues to be used to support generalizable claims about the influence of male teachers on the basis of their gender and racial affiliation with boys in schools. What is required, the authors conclude, is a disarticulation and, hence, a separat- ing out of role modeling from a discussion about the need for a greater representation of minority teachers in urban schools. © 2010 AERA.