2025 Theses Doctoral

Black Science Teacher Attrition as Political Struggle in the United States during the post-Obama Era of 2017-2022

Coleman, Shane Ellis

The five-year period following the 44th presidency of Barack Obama has been marked by increased anti-Black violence, neoliberal capitalism, and U.S. imperialism and the continued deterioration of the social and political working conditions of the Black masses. In the years following the Department of Education arguably continues to fail to retain an adequate number of Black science teachers in the growing need for equitable and accessible public science education.

This study collects and interprets the narrative-biographies of Black former science teachers by exploring their political experiences through storytelling of their life histories, educational experiences, and professional development before, during, and after leaving the classroom since the academic year of 2017-18, characterized here as the post-Obama era. Interviews and their transcriptions were analyzed using an anti-oppressive research methodology of self-thematization alongside a hermeneutic of a-priori codes that reflected political consciousness, identity, and activity in Black former science teacher’s decision-making throughout their teaching career that may have led to their early retirement.

Through a critical Marxist perspective of historical materialism and antiblackness in science education, the resulting narrative-biographies add to the expanding literature of science teacher attrition and Black political resistance in the United States.