Build Up Boys Interviews Joseph Derrick Nelson, Ph.D.

In this interview, Dr. Joseph Derrick Nelson talks about reimagining Black boyhood through early childhood education. His extensive research and unique Venn diagram of lived experience and academic study have brought him to the conclusion that we must train our teachers to lead with curiosity instead of projecting negative societal narratives onto children who deserve more. We must help Black boys not take on the damaging “burden of resilience.” We must let them be kids.

Joseph Derrick Nelson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Swarthmore College and Chair of the Black Studies Program. He is also a Senior Research Fellow with the School Participatory Action Research Collaborative—a race and gender equity institute at the University of Pennsylvania. As a sociologist of education, his research employs interdisciplinary frameworks to examine two interrelated fields of inquiry: (1) race, boyhood, and education, and (2) identity, culture, and school reform. For the last eight years, his research has been situated within learning environments that largely serve Black students from neighborhoods with concentrated poverty.

His multi-year projects to date have led to publications with Teachers College Record, Harvard Educational Review, the Psychology of Men and Masculinity, and co-editing a special issue on boys’ education with the Journal of Boyhood Studies. His forthcoming book is entitled, (Re)Imagining Black Boyhood: Portraits of Academic Success during the Middle School Years (Harvard Education Press). He recently co-edited the Routledge Handbook on Boyhood in the United States, with over thirty contributors. In public media, his research has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and National Public Radio.­­ In the United States and abroad, he has presented his research at The White House Summit for Children’s Media and Toys, the Ideas Festival of the Aspen Institute, and the International Boys’ School Coalition. In 2019, he was named Co-Editor of the historic journal, Men and Masculinities.

He is the Co-Founder and a Co-Principal Investigator of The Listening Project: Fostering Curiosity and Connection in Middle Schools with Dr. Niobe Way and other faculty at New York University. Funded by the Lyle-Spencer Foundation, this three-year project involves partnerships with 12 middle schools throughout New York City, where students and teachers are trained on a method of “Transformative Interviewing” (Way & Nelson, 2018). The goal is to re-ignite curiosity, listening, and connection among students, teachers, and parents, and in order to counteract dehumanizing stereotypes that often permeate middle school cultures. Prior to Swarthmore, he held postdoctoral fellowships with the Ford Foundation and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. In the high-poverty neighborhood where he grew up in Milwaukee, he taught first grade in a single-sex class of Black boys.