Ed Brockenbrough

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Associate Professor

Learning, Teaching, and Literacies Division

Contact

edbrocke@upenn.edu

(215) 746-6898

Media Inquiries:
Contact Penn GSE Communications.

Education

Ph.D. (Foundations and Practices of Education), University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, 2009
M.S.Ed. (Foundations and Practices of Education), University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, 2004
B.A. (American Civilization), Brown University, 1995

Areas of Expertise

Teacher education
Urban education
LGBTQ issues in education
Black masculinity studies
Queer of color critique

Programs

Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education Ph.D.

Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education Ed.D.

Teaching, Learning, and Leadership M.S.Ed.

Independent School Teaching Residency M.S.Ed.

Urban Teaching Apprenticeship M.S.Ed.

Strategic Leadership in Education Certificate Program

Media

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Biography

Professional Biography

Ed Brockenbrough is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) in Philadelphia, PA, where he teaches courses on diversity and social justice issues in education to doctoral students as well as to current and future K–12 educators. His research focuses on negotiations of identity, pedagogy, and power in urban educational spaces, particularly through the lenses of Black masculinity studies and queer of color critique. Previous projects include a study of an HIV/AIDS community-based agency that functioned as a pedagogical space for Black queer youth; and the SENT Study, an examination of how young Black queer males used social media and internet sites as alternative sources for sex education, which was funded by the University of Rochester’s Center for AIDS Research and the University of Pennsylvania’s Calvin Bland Faculty Fellowship. His latest research project explores the sexuality education experiences of queer Gen-Zers in the United States. Dr. Brockenbrough’s work has appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, and he is the author of two books: Black Men Teaching in Urban Schools: Reassessing Masculinity (Routledge, 2018) which is available for free download; and Learning While Black and Queer: Understanding the Educational Experiences of Black LGBTQ+ Youth (Harvard Education Press, 2024), which is available for pre-order.

Prior to joining Penn GSE’s faculty, Dr. Brockenbrough served as a faculty member at the University of Rochester’s Warner Graduate School of Education, where he prepared urban teachers as Director of the Urban Teaching and Leadership program. He also facilitated professional development sessions on LGBTQ+ issues for educators in the Rochester City School District, and he has continued doing so for educators in the School District of Philadelphia as a co-chair of the Philadelphia chapter of GLSEN. In addition to his work in K–12 schools, Dr. Brockenbrough has participated in and served on the board of directors for several community-based organizations serving queer communities of color. Prior to his graduate studies at Penn GSE from 2002 to 2008, Dr. Brockenbrough began his educational career as a middle and high school history teacher at an independent school in the Bronx, NY, and he served as co-chair for the New York City chapter of GLSEN, leading professional development workshops on LGBTQ+ issues for educators across the New York metropolitan area.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Brockenbrough’s research focuses on negotiations of identity, pedagogy, and power in urban educational contexts, particularly through the lenses of Black masculinity studies and queer of color critique. His dissertation, funded by a grant from the American Educational Research Association and the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, examined the challenges and opportunities encountered by Black male teachers in an urban, predominantly Black school district. Along with generating several journal articles, that research will appear in a sole-authored book titled Black Men Teaching in Urban Schools: Reassessing Masculinity, which was published by Routledge in early 2018.

His second line of inquiry on the educational perspectives and needs of queer youth of color emerged from an ethnography of an HIV/AIDS prevention center that operated as an alternative, culturally responsive pedagogical space for Black queer youth. That ethnography was followed by a mixed-methods study conducted with Dr. Mitchell Wharton — and funded by the University of Rochester’s Center for AIDS Research and the University of Pennsylvania’s Calvin Bland Faculty Fellowship — on the sexually oriented engagements of networked technologies by young Black men who have sex with men (The SENT Study). These studies inform his ongoing work in queer studies in education, with a particular attention to queerly responsive sexual health education.

Publications

Featured

Black Men Teaching in Urban Schools: Reassessing Black Masculinity

Selected Publications

Brockenbrough, E. (2024). Learning while Black and queer: Understanding the educational experiences of Black LGBTQ+ youth. Harvard Education Press.

Zaino, K., Brockenbrough, E., Cruz, C., Johnson, L., & Nicolazzo, Z. (2023). “It’s this practice of being with”: A kitchen-table talk on queer and LGBTQ+ educational justice. Equity & Excellence in Education, 56(1–2), 8–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2022.2158400

Brockenbrough, E. (2018). “We don’t see a lot of people like you”: Black queer men mentoring Black queer male youth. In S. Talburt (Ed.), Youth sexualities: Public feelings and contemporary cultural politics: Volume 1 (pp. 229–254). Praeger.

Brockenbrough, E. (2017). Outing the politics of knowledge production: Educational scholarship on LGBTQ issues. Educational Researcher, 46(9), 548–550. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17733974

Brockenbrough, E. (2016). Becoming queerly responsive: Culturally responsive pedagogy for Black and Latino urban queer youth. Urban Education, 51(2), 170–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085914549261

Brockenbrough, E. (2015). Queer of color agency in educational contexts: Analytic frameworks from a queer of color critique. Educational Studies, 51(1), 28–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2014.979929

Brockenbrough, E. (2014). Further mothering: Reconceptualizing White women educators’ work with Black youth. Equity & Excellence in Education, 47(3), 253–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2014.933758

Brockenbrough, E. (2015). “The discipline stop”: The contested role of Black male teachers in urban school discipline. Education and Urban Society, 47(5), 499–522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124514530154

Brockenbrough, E. (2013). Introduction to the special issue: Queers of color and anti-oppressive knowledge production. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(4), 426–440. https://doi.org/10.1111/curi.12023

Brockenbrough, E., & Boatwright, T. (2013). In the MAC: Creating safe spaces for transgender youth of color. In K. Jocson (Ed.), Cultural transformations: Youth and pedagogies of possibility (pp. 165–182). Harvard Education Press.

Brockenbrough, E. (2012). Agency and abjection in the closet: The voices (and silences) of Black queer male teachers. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 25(6), 741–765. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2011.590157

Brockenbrough, E. (2012). Emasculation blues: Black male teachers’ perspectives on gender and power in the teaching profession. Teachers College Record, 114(5), 1–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811211400504

Brockenbrough, E. (2012). “You ain’t my daddy!”: Black male teachers and the politics of surrogate fatherhood. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(4), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2011.555091

News & Media

Penn GSE News

Penn GSE faculty, students in San Diego for leading international conference on education research

Eighty-seven Penn GSE faculty, staff and students are presenting at AERA 22, the world’s largest gathering of education researchers. The conference runs through April 26 in San Diego, CA.

April 22, 2022

Zaya Wade and Lil Nas X are making it easier for queer and trans youths to explore their identities

‘To have young people who are taking center stage in the realms that other young people are really sort of using to explore their identity is crucial,’ Ed Brockenbrough recently told USA Today.

April 30, 2021

Listening to the needs of Black male teachers

In his forthcoming book, the Collaboratory’s Ed Brockenbrough explores the unique challenges Black male teachers face.

May 10, 2018

University of Pennsylvania Names Calvin Bland Fellows

The Penn Futures Project has named three Calvin Bland Faculty Fellows to collaborate on research for boys and young men of color. Supported by a $2 million endowment from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Fellows were selected from the faculty at Penn’s Schools of Nursing , Graduate School of Education, and Social Policy & Practice.

September 6, 2017

In the Media

‘It’s just getting worse.’ Central Bucks passes policy censoring class materials with ‘sexualized content’

Ed Brockenbrough, an expert on LGBTQ development, speaks on new policies being implemented in the Central Bucks School District that will allow censoring of "sexualized content." Brockenbrough says these new policies are comparable to Florida's "don't say gay" laws in the way they will disproportionately effect LGBTQ students and other marginalized youth.

WHYY | August 14, 2022

LGBT+ marches from London to New York call for end to racism

Ed Brockenbrough said Pride organizers’ efforts to promote the Black Lives Matter movement don’t go far enough to address racism in the LGBTQ community. "Activism in Black and brown queer communities has been happening for a long time without full buy-in from white gatekeepers of queer resources," he said.

Reuters | June 27, 2020

Penn’s Grad School of Education cultivates a pipeline

Dean Pam Grossman, Vivian Gadsden, and Ed Brockenbrough discuss how Penn GSE advocates for equity and inclusion as it builds a pipeline for future students. “Having a diverse set of teachers, a diverse set of leaders is incredibly important in inspiring the next generation to imagine themselves in those roles,” said the Dean.

Diverse Issues in Higher Education | August 21, 2019

Awards & Honors

Ed Brockenbrough received a Body of Work Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Queer Studies Special Interest Group in recognition of a sustained research agenda that has shaped the field of LGBTQ studies in education and/or Queer Studies in education.

Posted on November 1, 2020