Lub Zej Zog Project: HMoob Educators Coalitions’ use of sib hlub si pa(a)b and participatory design research (re)claim linguistically and culturally sustaining education

• In Event: From Margins to Models: Sustaining Heritage & Dual Language Education in Less Commonly Taught Languages

Abstract

Objective
This study offers a case example of how HMoob language teachers collectively contend with challenges of multiple marginalization, restricted availability and access to financial supports to stabilize heritage and dual language programs (HL/DLI) in schools, as well as linguistically and culturally revitalizing and sustaining educational materials. HMoob were forcefully displaced from their lands in what are now southern China and Southeast Asia following the US Secret War in Laos. HMoob have leveraged local US K-12 education policies to form the only HMoob language school options in the world (immersion/bilingual programs/schools, heritage language elective programs) (Author, 2024; Co-Authors, 2025; Xiong-Lor & Xiong, in press). We examine how HMoob educators across state lines use the power of coalitions and HMoob practices of sib hlub sib pa(a)b (love each other, help each other) (Authors, 2025; Yang, 2023) to develop curriculum, materials, and professional development designed by and for HMoob language futurity.

Conceptual Framework
Less commonly taught languages (LCTL) are underrepresented in both program availability and research (Morita-Mullaney, 2024). For multiply marginalized languages (LCTL, refugee-displaced, not associated with state education globally), educators are tasked with teaching, curriculum/materials design, program advocacy, and converting materials and professional development designed for more commonly taught languages to meet their needs. At the same time, there is a depth of capacity, knowledge, and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006) that LCTL bilingual/HL teachers can bring (Xiong-Lor & Xiong, in press) when supported against isolation.

Mode of inquiry, data sources, and analysis
We examined how a coalition of HMoob educators organized outside school for liberatory education within U.S. schools. We sought to understand how these coalitions used participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) and leveraged sib hlub sib pab (loving each other, helping each other) (Yang, 2023) as a form of relational accountability (Wilson, 2008) in language reclamation (Leonard, 2017). Three years of participatory ethnographic data examined the (1) processes and (2) products developed by these coalition educators to develop and sustain community-driven school-based HMoob language programs.

Findings
We identified sib hlub sib pa(a)b in the coalitions' organizing principles. Educators also leveraged sib hlub sib pab across four cycles of codesign: curriculum-making, standards-making, ethnic studies language teaching, and critical dialect awareness studies. Through sib hlub sib pa(a)b, HMoob educators created open-access LCTL bilingual and HL reclamation resources: texts, materials, curriculum, language and literacy standards, and professional development.

Significance
This study responds to calls by critical HMoob Educational Studies scholars to examine and develop justice education and educational research for HMoob American youth (Pheng & Xiong, 2022) and for HMoob-centered inquiries toward liberatory and affirming education (Xiong & Mouavangsou, 2023). It extends these calls specifically into the arenas of bilingual education, heritage language reclamation work, language teacher knowledge, and LCTL curriculum studies. In particular, findings from this study offer inroads to heritage language reclamation related to community design solutions for language and knowledge system futurity and contribute to developing foundations for multilingual ethnic studies pedagogies, curricula, and frameworks for language-focused analysis.

Author

• Jenna Cushing-Leubner, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater