Howard, T. C. (2013). How does it feel to be a problem? Black male students, schools, and learning in enhancing the knowledge base to disrupt deficit frameworks. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 54-86.

A close examination of a number of political, social, and economic indicators reveals the ongoing challenges of what it means to be Black and male in the United States. Many of these challenges begin at birth and persist over time. The complex, yet complicated picture of life for Black males in the United States remains a topic of study and analysis across a multitude of disciplines, and although many have described the depth and breadth of the problem from a research, policy, and practice standpoint, minimal change has occurred on a large-scale level (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Needless to say, there is more to be studied, analyzed, and learned. Therefore, the focus of this work is to provide a selected synthesis on the research on, about, or concerned with Black males within the context of education. Although previous works have documented some of the challenges that African American males encounter in schools, there is a pressing need to examine the larger body of research on Black males and develop a comprehensive account of what one knows about this population, what general trends exist in the literature about them, identify some of the strengths and problems with the current literature base, and be able to offer some recommendations for future research, theory, and practice on this population. In this article, the author provides a selective review of the research that has documented African American males and their experiences in PreK-12 schools, but the search is done in a way that seeks to highlight those works that disrupt the persistence of deficit-based notions. (Contains 2 notes.)

Access to full article can be found here:

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1004583