"Caught Between Two Worlds": Asian American Elementary Teachers' Enactment of Asian American History

• In Event: 44.073 - Beyond Black, Brown, and White: A Critical Symposium of Asian American Teacher Identity

Abstract

Asian Americans are the most invisible ethnoracial group in the traditional narrative of American history (Heilig, Brown, & Brown, 2012; Suh, An, & Forest, 2015). Using Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit), this qualitative case study examines how four Asian American elementary teachers integrated Asian American histories into social studies and explores how this enactment was informed by their K-12 and professional experiences. The educators in this qualitative case study (Stake, 1995) will likely be the only Asian American teachers that students have in their K-12 academic careers and had a range of educational backgrounds and teaching experiences and represent the wide diversity of Asian America. Data was collected through semi-structured individual interviews, a focus group interview, classroom observations, and post-lesson reflection interviews, which were descriptively then axially coded and triangulated to determine patterns and themes (Miles, Huberman & Saldaña, 2013). Three findings emerged: First, the teachers deconstructed students’ essentializing notions of Asian Americans and dispelled the trope of Asian Americans as forever foreigners. Second, by including Asian American historical perspectives, the educators exposed students to nuanced understandings of race and discrimination beyond the Black/White binary. Third, the teachers (re)constructed Asian American narratives and broadened students’ conceptions of citizenship. The teachers drew from their own experiences of marginalization to discuss diversity and difference in the classroom; one participant described feeling "caught between two worlds" as an immigrant child and now as an Asian Other in a predominantly White city. Such outsider status made them staunch advocates for appreciation of difference and belonging beyond typical notions of tolerance as these sought to disrupt the traditional historical narrative through critical curricular interpretations with social justice ends. This scholarship is significant in its attention to an understudied group of teachers in the South, the teaching of elementary counternarratives, chronicling the ways that these 1.5 or 2nd generation immigrants’ (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001) pedagogy was influenced by cultural and linguistic experiences, and how teacher education programs designed to support the white, native-born and monolingual majority generally do not acknowledge such experiences nor their application within the classroom.

Author

• Noreen Naseem Rodriguez, Iowa State University