"The Fact Is, This Was My Life": Black Educators' Privileging of Experiential Knowledge in School-University Partnerships

This chapter focuses on the perspectives and conceptualizations of Black educators engaged in a school-university partnership that sought to examine and support 12 schools in engaging and implementing culturally based pedagogy through professional development. Findings from this chapter reveal that the educators' privileged their experiential knowledge throughout the partnership and professional development experience. Specifically, the educators' expression of how their lived experiences directly influenced their connectedness to the work of the partnership, their readiness to engage in the partnership, and their overall mistrust of their university partners was prevalent throughout the duration of the partnership.