A Critical Discourse Analysis: The Ways in Which African American Male Administrators Talk about Race and Their Roles as Administrators in Public Schools in Alabama

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe ways that African American males were either motivated or demotivated to become school administrators. Because African American males only represent 2% of educators in the United States, the field for African American males to become administrators were limited (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). There is a paucity of literature on African American male administrators (Grauerholz & Turner, 2017); however, research that has been done on African American male administrators were on their lived experiences.

This study was conducted in central Alabama and 10 participants who were high school administrators agreed to participate. The method for this study was Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA was used to determine how language influences social practice in education. Furthermore, intertextuality was used to analyze participants discourse to determine the intertextual features of the interview data. The data was interpreted and compared based on repeated listening to narratives and readings of transcripts to discover repeated patterns in participants stories.

This study was guided from the following research question: In what ways, do African American male administrators talk about the ways in which they encourage or increase the number of African American male administrators through linguistic, discursive, and sociocultural practices? Through the analysis of the interviews, the findings revealed the following themes: (a) African American identity, (b) roles of African American male educators, (c) education policies and practices, (d) societal norms, and (e) motivations to become an administrator.

The findings of this study may encourage African American males to consider education as a career and current African American male educators to pursue administration. In addition, this research study may provide opportunities to discuss how policies and practices contributed to the underachievement of African American male students.