“Trying to Make Me Feel Like I’m White”: Asian Americans’ Racialized Experiences in Teacher Education

• In Event: “Spoilers” for or Against Equity? Implications of Asian American Racialization Across Regional and Institutional Contexts

Abstract

Under-examination and representation of Asian American experiences in education perpetuates their invisibility in both teacher education and in classrooms (Benham, 2006; Coloma, 2006; Hsieh & Kim, 2020). Previous research has suggested that teacher education programs may not sufficiently address Asian American teachers’ racial positionality when preparing them to teach with a social justice lens (Philip, 2014). Building on this prior work, this study examined how Asian American teacher candidates at a West Coast university (WCU), where almost 30% of the teacher candidates identify as Asian American, consider their racial identities as they prepare to become classroom teachers with social justice commitments.

Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit, Iftikar & Museus, 2018) extends Critical Race Theory by centering the specific ways through which White supremacy shapes the lived experiences of Asian Americans, such as the model minority myth. We specifically draw upon two tenets of AsianCrit: Asianization, which recognizes the particular processes of racialization that constructs the category of “Asian American,” and story, theory and praxis, which “centers Asian American experiences to offer an alternative epistemology” (p. 941). These tenets allow us to surface how the teacher education program flattened or invisibilized Asian American experiences and to highlight participants’ counternarratives.

Drawing from data collected across 2022-2024, our analysis focused on: 13 individual interviews and 3 focus groups with 13 teacher candidates who self-identified as Asian American. We employed inductive coding to identify emerging themes in the data. We also wrote analytic memos (Emerson et al., 2011) while coding interviews, noting any repeating and emerging themes.

Initial themes suggest that Asian American teacher candidates experienced a decentering of their identities in the teacher education program, including in classes, placement, and broader discussions about teaching for social justice. For example, one participant shared, “Being in this space is the first time where I feel like people are trying to make me feel I’m White.” He described feeling unable to discuss his own racialized experiences during discussions because others assumed he was privileged, despite his many attempts to talk about being a first-generation low-income student. This “weird and isolating” experience made it difficult for this participant to address the questions he came up against as he prepared to enter the classroom as an Asian American teacher. The invisibilization of Asian American racial positionality via proximity to Whiteness is a major mechanism of Asianization. This participant’s experiences exemplify how the WCU’s teacher education program reproduced Asianization. In a direct challenge to these Asianizing processes, however, teacher candidates in our study envisioned teaching as a way to center Asian Americans as diverse and multi-faceted humans. Thus, they imagined their presence in the teaching profession as a counternarrative to hegemonic discourses.

Teacher preparation for Asian American teacher candidates as racialized individuals is incomplete and insufficient without explicit, critical discussions and learning opportunities to grapple with the particularities of Asian American racialization in education. Teacher education programs supporting Asian American teacher candidates must contend with how these critical conversations push and complicate representations of race and power in schools.

Authors

• Eujin Park, Stanford University

• Faith Kwon, Stanford University

• Candice Jeehae Kim, Stanford University