Disrupting the discourse: Canadian Black women teachers in the lives of marginalized students

"This dissertation begins with a specific question: What can education learn from experiences of Black women teachers about meeting the educational needs of marginalized learners? It explores this question by focusing on the pedagogical practices five Canadian Black women teachers employ to meet the learning needs of their students, particularly those most marginalized and underserviced. While their voices are generally missing in Canadian educational research literature, the present inquiry is guided by an understanding that the teaching practices of Black women teachers are individualized and contextual; they encounter and develop professional expertise from many different subjective and educational trajectories, and they learn to teach students, on multiple terms and at varied levels of success. The research pursues three lines of investigation organized by the diverse experiences of Black women teacher respondents: (1) biographical and identity formation as teachers who are Black women; (2) attitudes, strategies and negotiations as ""minority"" teachers in a white majority profession; (3) and what matters most to these Black women about the academic success of marginalized students while teaching and interacting with them in the classroom. Drawing upon observations and interviews, insights from the teachers highlight the educational problematic as more about the long-standing ""teaching-gap"" than about challenges students present. The study yields recommendations toward closing this ""teaching gap"" to more generally improve educational provision to all students, and more specifically to marginalized students in Canadian schools."