African-Centered Pedagogy: Developing Schools of Achievement for African American Children

CHAPTER THREE. CULTURE, COGNITION, AND THE COMMUNITY OF ACHIEVEMENT

CHAPTER THREE CULTURE, COGNITION, AND THE COMMUNITY OF ACHIEVEMENT What should we be doing? The answers, I believe, lie not in a proliferation of new reform programs but in some basic understandings of who we are and how we are connected to and disconnect from one another. —Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflicts in the Classroom An African-centered pedagogy is concerned with the acquisition of self-determination and self-sufficiency for African people. It is ultimately concerned with truth and the “Afrocentric mission to humanize the universe.” —Agyei Akoto, Nation Building: Theory and Practice in Afrikan-Centered Education Almost every teacher has heard the phrase “community of learners.” By that is meant viewing one’s classroom as a collective dedicated to learning and development in all of its rich and variegated forms. It is a charming vision and an engaging metaphor for one’s classroom. What would a community of learners be like if it were specifically designed to promote the achievement and academic development of African American learners? That is the question taken up next as I explain the theoretical framework in this chapter and the next. I refer the reader once again to the diagram, Figure 2 depicting the basic components of the African-centered pedagogy. The reader will notice that there are five outer circles surrounding a larger inner circle. For the time being, I would like you to think about the larger inner circle as an African-centered community of learners. This circle represents the social, cultural, and historically situated system of practices that bind teacher(s) and learners together in the joint activity of learning achievement. I devote this chapter to developing a deeper understanding of the “inner circle” representing the community of learners. In the next chapter, I discuss in greater detail the outer circles of the diagram, representing the five essential cultural practices of an African-centered pedagogy. Their connection to the larger circle is meant to signify a system of practices that draw their meaning and relevance from the fact that they emerge from an African-centric community of learning. So imagine a community of learning that has as its list of features those qualities of culturally relevant pedagogy articulated by Ladson-Billings— including a teacher who is connected to the children, to their lives and cultures , and to the wider community from which they come. Imagine these as the classrooms of the exemplary teachers of African American children described by Ladson-Billings, Foster, Irvine, and others. How do we make a community of learners, say in your classroom, a community of achievement for those African American students in the group? We have said that a connected pedagogy for African American learners is grounded in the collective cultural legacy of Africans in America. The following depiction of a community of achievement for African American children begins with an articulation of the African-centered set of assumptions and understandings that clarify the political and cultural realities of schooling for Black children in White America. How should we think about “culture” and “achievement” in ways that incorporate political and cultural realities of the schooling of Black children in White America? What do we need to know to create a community of achievement for African American children? How do we create the “village” that is organized as a culture of learning, a climate of caring , and domain of development for African American children? We have the general outline—namely, appraising instructional practice form an Africancentered foundation. But the specifics have yet to be filled in. We consider those knowledge foundations next. BRIEF FOUNDATIONS HISTORY It might be helpful to look first at several earlier attempts at addressing the achievement of African American students. The key to doing this has been to look critically and analytically at the social and cultural contexts of their educational experience. These prior frameworks include the so-called ecological model for explaining school success and failure, and the notion of culturally responsive teaching. The social and behavioral sciences have not been the handmaidens to the profession of teaching that the physical and biological sciences have been to 38 AFRICAN-CENTERED PEDAGOGY the profession of medicine. The disciplines of cognitive, developmental, and educational psychology and sociology, which have traditionally provided the knowledge base for education, are undergoing significant paradigm shifts. This is a good thing for developing connected pedagogy for African American children . Inquiry in any field...