ABSTRACT
This chapter is a conversation between author Dr. King and veteran teacher Ms. Singleton about the main themes in this volume. King and Singleton discuss the ways in which an African worldview and cultural concepts inform scholarship, and how curriculum and teaching based on this knowledge have the capacity to democratize the school experience so that students can see and know the world that standard school knowledge has obscured. They discuss how to retrieve an old but unacknowledged episteme—one Africans brought to the Diaspora and passed along intergenerationally as African heritage knowledge. With knowledge about this episteme, teachers can provide access to culturally and ethically informed content and emancipatory pedagogy. Importantly, this conversation describes how framing curriculum with an African episteme can build relationships among teachers, students, and families; center students in the curriculum and classroom; provide opportunities for students to locate themselves in their community’s ongoing heritage; and encourage collaboration between teacher educators and PK-12 teachers.
