Becoming a teacher otherwise: pedagogical imagination of a transmigrant, refugee-background emerging educator

• In Event: Always Becoming: Identity Work in the Making of Teachers

Abstract

This study traces the pedagogical becoming of Maya, a refugee-background Pa’O transmigrant woman, whose life unfolds through displacement, racialized schooling, and intergenerational ethics. Using a single case study design and life history methodology, the research analyzes how Maya develops a pedagogy of critical caring rooted in Metta, a Buddhist ethic of care. Her teaching emerges from embodied knowledge and relational memory, not institutional training. Grounded in decolonial theory and AsianCrit, this study reimagines teacher knowledge as epistemic labor. Maya’s story shows how refugee-background educators act as epistemic agents, challenging dominant paradigms in teacher education and offering alternative visions of what teaching, learning, and justice can become.

Author

• Jeong Yeon Park, California State University - Fullerton