A Critical Examination of Transnational Chinese Teachers’ Experiences in Mandarin-English Dual Language Bilingual Education Programs

• In Event: Transnational Perspectives in Bilingual Education: Honoring Community Knowledge and Fostering Equity

Abstract

With the increase in immigrant families and the desire to maintain their heritage languages alongside English acquisition, dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs have emerged as a promising approach to counter the pervasive monolingual English-only ideologies (Wiley, 2014). Chinese immigrant/transnational teachers play a crucial role in Mandarin DLBE programs and experience various challenges in DLBE spaces (e.g., Xu, 2024; Zhou & Li, 2021), yet research on these teachers’ racialized experiences remains limited (Sung & Tsai, 2019). This study focuses on Chinese transnational teachers’ experiences in Mandarin-English DLBE programs in Utah, the first state with a state-legislated and funded K-16 dual language education model (Valdez et al., 2016; Utah Dual Language Immersion, 2023). We seek to understand Chinese DLBE teachers’ racialized experiences, with a specific focus on how their transnational identities, expertise, and epistemologies are valued or dismissed in DLBE spaces.
This qualitative case study focuses on four Chinese transnational DLBE teachers who grew up in mainland China and migrated to the United States as adults. All participants hold master’s degrees and have extensive teaching experience prior to becoming elementary or secondary DLBE teachers. We employ AsianCrit (Author et al., 2024; Iftikar & Museus, 2018) and transnational funds of knowledge (Kwon et al., 2019) as analytical lenses. Grounded in Critical Race Theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017), AsianCrit helps us understand Asian American experiences in the context of hegemonic whiteness. Specifically, the Transnational Context tenet of AsianCrit underscores the importance of understanding transnational teachers’ experiences in a global framework (Author et al., 2024) and honoring their transnational funds of knowledge (Kwon et al., 2019).
Three themes emerge from our data. First, we found that Chinese DLBE transnational teachers experience racial discrimination, microaggressions, and exclusion in DLBE spaces, manifesting in stakeholders’ negative assumptions about their expertise, ignoring their professional needs, and being unwilling to support their green card applications. These subtle yet pervasive forms of racism create a hostile environment for Chinese teachers, affecting their professional confidence and sense of belonging. Second, Chinese teachers’ transnational identities and expertise are viewed as deficient. Parents and colleagues often challenge their presumed foreignness in language, culture, and religion. Their extensive transnational teaching experience is frequently questioned rather than valued. Third, despite these challenges, Chinese DLBE teachers show pride in their transnational identities and proactively resist the deficit narratives. They actively engage students with Chinese culture and modern history rooted in their transnational epistemologies and set practical rules to counter the “Mandarin only” policies in the classroom. Furthermore, they leverage their excellence in teaching to negotiate with school districts and advance the green card process.
By examining transnational Chinese DLBE teachers’ racialized experiences, we argue for celebrating, rather than stigmatizing, their transnational experiences, expertise, and epistemologies. This topic is especially relevant considering the rise of anti-Asian/anti-China sentiment and intensified US-China relations (Author et al., 2022). It also has important implications for improving support and retention of transnational teachers of color, fostering critical consciousness among DLBE stakeholders, and ultimately transforming DLBE programs in Utah and the United States.

Authors

• Wenyang Sun, University of Utah

• Xiao Hu, University of Utah