Critical perspectives among Latino male teachers: Centering new voices and conceptual frameworks in research with men of color educators

Michael Singh

In recent years, there has been a tremendous effort to recruit and retain more men of color (MOC) into the teaching profession. While these efforts remain widely popular, emerging critiques challenge deficit logics that posit MOC as the fixers of problematic boys of color. Furthermore, critical race scholars have critiqued the ways the catch-all category ?MOC? lacks specificity and forfeits a robust analysis of race. The proposed project is a qualitative case study exploring the life histories and professional experiences of Latino male teachers from non-dominant backgrounds. It is designed as a life-history narrative inquiry, or testimonio, and will utilize a three-phase interview regimen. As a particularistic case study, my purposeful sampling shall bring Indigenous, queer, critical, and Black Latino male voices to the fore. The conceptual framing of this project offers an intersectional and relational approach to the study of race, gender, and sexuality. The objectives of this research are a) explore the lives and experiences of Latino male teachers?a teacher population rarely studied in isolation, and b) deconstruct the heterogeneity of the grouping ?Latino male teachers.? This study will make a timely contribution to conversations surrounding MOC teachers and lead to new avenues of research.

About Michael Singh

Michael V. Singh is an assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Davis. His research is guided by questions of racial and gender justice in schools, with a focus on education initiatives targeting Latino men and boys. His work has three interrelated strands: 1) Ethnographic explorations of Latino manhood amid neoliberal framings of race and urban schooling, 2) The professional experiences and pedagogical practices of Latino men educators, and 3) Everyday refusals and queer disruptions among Latino men and boys. Dr. Singh is currently completing his first book manuscript with the University of Minnesota Press. Tentatively titled, Good Boys: Race, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Empowering Latino Boys in Schools, this book comes from two years of ethnographic research with a school-based mentorship program. It examines the ways converging neoliberal discourses of race, gender, class, and sexuality influence how Latino male empowerment programs (re)imagine the role of Latino men youth workers, who are positioned as positive role models in the lives of their students. Singh received his Ph.D. from the Berkeley School of Education at UC Berkeley. He was a NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow and later a UC President?s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Santa Barbara. His research has been published in journals such as American Educational Research Journal, Urban Education, Race Ethnicity and Education, and Critical Studies in Education.