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Effective Strategies for Recruiting African American Males into Undergraduate Teacher-Education Programs
Abstract
In 2011, the U.S. Secretary of Education launched a national campaign urging black males to choose teaching as a career with the ambitious goal of adding 80,000 black male public school teachers by 2015 (Teach Campaign, 2011). This campaign, coupled with recent reports, suggests students should encounter a wide diversity of teachers (Boser, 2011; Byrd et al., 2011). Arguments have been made that teacher diversity should include gender, race, and socio-economic status (Angus & Oliveira, 2012). This study focused on an important aspect of this problem: African American males. This mixed-methods sequential descriptive study inquired about effective strategies for recruiting African American males into undergraduate teacher-education programs. The study employed multiple data collection methods: reviewing the literature, accessing institutional websites and other online recruitment materials; sending an inquiry letter, and interviewing those responsible for recruiting prospective teacher-education undergraduates. Four research questions guided the study. 1. What strategies are presented in the literature as best practices for recruiting males and African American males, in particular, as undergraduates into teacher-education programs? 2. What strategies do institutions use to recruit males and African American males, in particular, into undergraduate teacher-education programs? 3. What do program leaders perceive as effective strategies, and barriers to those strategies, for recruiting males and African American males into undergraduate teacher-education programs? 4. Based on the research results, what effective strategies and barriers to those strategies are identified for attracting African American males into undergraduate teacher-education programs? The literature review disclosed that the Call Me Mister programs were the most active and successful in attracting African American males into teacher-education. The websites of a random sample of undergraduate teacher-education programs (N = 1,500) revealed that few traditional colleges and universities (2%) used their websites to attract undergraduate males into teacher-education programs and fewer targeted African American males (1%). The interviews (N = 7) identified several effective strategies in use: offering institutional scholarships; finding other financial support; recruiting actively; forming community partnerships; achieving a critical mass; and seeking internal institutional support. Building upon these strategies, a series of recommendations are put forth for leaders of teacher-education programs to consider.
Subject Area
African American Studies|Multicultural Education|Teacher education
Recommended Citation
Henry, Dariel D.T, "Effective Strategies for Recruiting African American Males into Undergraduate Teacher-Education Programs" (2017). Dissertation & Theses Collection. AAI10265479.
https://scholarsarchive.jwu.edu/dissertations/AAI10265479