1st Edition
The Afrocentric Praxis of Teaching for Freedom Connecting Culture to Learning
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in the authors’ "Re-membering" History in Teacher and Student Learning by combining "re-membered" (democratized) historical content with emancipatory pedagogies that are connected to an African cultural platform.
A Note about the Cover Image
Foreword by Adelaide L. Hines Sanford
Preface as Prequel
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction: "Re-membering" More
Chapter 2: Culture Connects
Chapter 3: Harriet Tubman: "Re-membering" Cultural Continuities
Chapter 4: "Re-membering" the Jeanes Teachers
Chapter 5: "Re-membering" Cultural Concepts
Chapter 6: Practicing Cultural Concepts and Continuity
About the Authors
Index
Biography
Joyce E. King holds the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair for Urban Teaching, Learning and Leadership at Georgia State University, USA.
Ellen E. Swartz is an independent scholar and education consultant in curriculum development and the construction of culturally informed instructional materials for K-12 teachers and students.
"A great book! Carefully thought out and developed. It will be easy for teachers to follow and to learn."
Carl A. Grant, University of Wisconsin Madison, USA
"An important and foundational piece in the field, this book is impressive, timely, engaging, and much needed. It is at once ‘deep’ and understandable, advancing both theoretical and practical understandings of Afrocentric praxis. I am smiling as I write this and activated to use and build on this brilliant work."
Gloria Swindler Boutte, University of South Carolina, USA
"King and Swartz demonstrate how to teach content based on Afrocentric theory and African worldviews in ways that result in a more holistic and historically accurate presentation of people of African descent and related events. This will not only reconnect African American children to their heritage knowledge, but will elevate and deepen all students’ understanding of people of African descent."
Sandra Winn Tutwiler, Washburn University, USA
