“It Was a Wake-Up Call:” Imagining Transnational Critical Race Pedagogies for Multilingual Newcomers

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: CERECG SIG Round Table 7: Critical Considerations in Teaching, Learning, and Policy (Table 3)

Abstract

This paper bridges educational scholarship on critical pedagogies of race with sociological theories of transnational racialization in order to examine Ethnic Studies classrooms as a site where newcomer im/migrant youth learn about race. I focus on how teachers in public schools that exclusively serve multilingual, recently-arrived adolescent newcomers are taking up the call to teach Ethnic Studies in California as it becomes the first state in the country to mandate K-12 Ethnic Studies. Through a collaborative, qualitative project involving teachers at three high schools, I explore how teachers of multilingual newcomers imagine and enact ethnic studies. In doing so, I shed light on the tensions, challenges, and possibilities of teaching ethnic studies with multilingual newcomers.

Author

• Rita Kamani-Renedo, Stanford University