Female teacher's perceptions of African-American male elementary school students who misbehave: a narrative inquiry

Wellington Williams (University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ, United States)

Emerald Open Research

ISSN: 2631-3952

Article publication date: 2 February 2021

Issue publication date: 23 December 2023

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Abstract

Disruptive students in the classroom can affect classroom dynamics and individual teacher-student interactions. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to discover perceptions female teachers harbor toward misbehaving African-American elementary school males. The study incorporated a narrative inquiry to investigate perceptions female teachers have toward African-American male elementary school students. The research project involved a purposeful sample of eight female elementary teachers, four African-American teachers and four Caucasian teachers from one public school district in the southeastern United States. The female teachers reflected on their lived experiences and perceptions derived from experiences and encounters they have with African-American elementary school males. Data collection from the study occurred through individual responses from a survey and follow-up telephone interviews. From teacher's descriptions of perceived successes and failures, coded commonalities in reports, labeled themes, conclusions, and recommendations resulted from data collection and analysis. The findings revealed some African-American male elementary school students misbehave in the classroom and others do not. The term “misbehave” is based upon the experiences and type of interactions and exchanges teachers had with African-American male students in the classroom and African-American males outside the school environment. Gender, culture, and language may factor in creating effective teacherstudent interactions to enable better relationships and student outcomes.

Keywords

Citation

Williams, W. (2023), "Female teacher's perceptions of African-American male elementary school students who misbehave: a narrative inquiry", Emerald Open Research, Vol. 1 No. 14. https://doi.org/10.1108/EOR-14-2021-0003

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021 Williams, W. and University of Phoenix

License

This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Corresponding author

Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

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