Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act Implementation: Lessons From Professional Development Assessment

• In Event: Asian and Asian American Education

Abstract

Illinois passed the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act in 2021, requiring a unit for teaching Asian American history in public K-12 schools (Meadows, 2021). Accordingly, a group of faculty and doctoral students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have developed a professional development (PD) series of online microcredential modules to support teachers in teaching Asian American history in their curriculum. Using AsianCrit framework, this qualitative research examines how curricular inclusion of TEAACH influences teachers’ learning and teaching of Asian American history. Document analysis on PD data revealed the “invisibility” of Asian American history, driven by US-centered school curricula. This PD program is designed to contribute to the visibility of Asian American history in the classrooms.

Author

• Hanna Kim, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign