Teaching from the inside out: Teaching practices and lived experiences of African American women teachers who taught in the segregated South

The purpose of this study is to understand the practice of teaching and ultimately to clarify the unknown quality of culturally specific teaching by examining the practices of teachers who taught in the racially segregated South. Employing life history methodology, the research chronicles the teaching lives of five African American women who were successful in teaching African American students.; Life history methodology requires that lives be understood within a cultural and historical context. This study reports a rich description of how the teaching practices of five African American women teachers were responsive to a particular period of time of American history when segregation was the law. Using the "three-C" framework of Afrocentric scholar Wade Nobles (1992), I explore how the context (location) influenced who these teachers were (culture) and how they taught (content).; The second lens I used for understanding these teachers' practices is the Afrocentric feminist epistemology described by Patricia Hill Collins (1991), paying particular attention to three dimensions of Afrocentric feminist epistemology that embrace specific ways of knowing: concrete experience as the criterion for knowing, emphasis on caring, and emphasis on personal accountability.; My findings establish that these teachers developed a strong set of selfless moral values and beliefs as well as committed teaching practices. They wanted to make sure that their students' wills to succeed would survive against the odds. To them, education was the key to a better future. Because of this, these teachers had high expectations of their students. Their teaching practices focused on nurturing the students' intellects with a balanced approach of strictness and caring. The five teachers spoke of their experiences of teaching students with the same dedication and love. They cared about their students, and by shaping them to become self-reliant individuals, these teachers gave back to the black community.; I close with an analysis of how differences between my teachers' context of segregation and today's teachers' context of integration affect teaching practices, and I make recommendations for ways in which today's teachers can create practices that capture the spirit of what was most effective in my teachers' approach to teaching.