Toward an Asian American Studies Pedagogy: Contexts and Conditions for Radical Education

• In Event: K–12 Asian American Studies as Praxis: Defining Deep Solidarities for Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives & Research Question
As schools, school districts, and states begin to institutionalize Ethnic Studies in policy and practice, we examine the ways in which Asian American Studies (AAS), a subfield of Ethnic Studies, has informed solidarity and social movements at the K-12 level. This conceptual paper works to engage the following questions: Whose stories do we center in Asian American Studies? What is Asian American Studies pedagogy? How has Asian American Studies informed the movement for K-12 Ethnic Studies?

Theory
We expand on Ethnic Studies pedagogies (Tintiangco-Cubales et al. 2015) to offer a praxis that centers the experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AA and PI) in order to examine power relations, community building, resistance, and social justice. We theorize an Asian American Studies pedagogy that relies on AA and PI voices while simultaneously valuing relational racialization (Molina, HoSang, Gutiérrez, 2019) as a vehicle towards developing “deep solidarities” (Fujino, 2018).

Methods/Sources
We draw upon a meta-analysis of the literature and our own experiences as scholar-activists at the nexus between Asian American Studies and Education to conceptualize a theory of Asian American Studies pedagogy rooted in solidarity and social movements. Additional methods and data sources included: collective autoethnography and review of artifacts. As a discipline born out of student and community struggle, we trace the lineages of AAS and the pathways of grassroots organizing that have been created to bring AAS to K-12 classrooms and teacher education programs.

Findings
Informed by our collective analysis and experiential knowledge, the following tenets outline an Asian American Studies pedagogy. Taken together, they are at once instructive for ways to better serve all students through an AAS lens and detail how educational researchers can utilize these tenets for scholarship connected to Asian American communities. Our findings include that AAS pedagogy as a political praxis (1) is restorative and rooted in student wellness and healing; (2) relies on relationship-building between teachers, students, families, communities, and land; (3) re-examines power relations with a radical, intersectional, structural analytical framework; and (4) is responsive to community needs and actions.

Significance
In the last decade, the movement for K-12 Ethnic Studies has transformed the landscape of California schools. Families, students, teachers, and community members have advocated for an inclusive curriculum that centers Black, Indigenous, and People of Color stories. During this time, California has developed an Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, one that has invoked contentious debate regarding what is and should be included within Ethnic Studies curricula. At the same time, Asian American communities have endured racialized and gendered violence magnified by anti-Asian sentiment in the COVID-19 era. Our paper offers an AAS framing of current curricular debates and violence within our communities, all of which enables Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies courses to remain current in its instructional and pedagogical content. In doing so, we provide insight for application and utility of an Asian American Studies pedagogy across and beyond Asian American communities and other minoritized groups.

Authors

• Jocyl Sacramento, California State University - East Bay
  Presenting Author

• Edward R. Curammeng, California State University - Dominguez Hills
  Presenting Author

• Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University
  Presenting Author