Teaching race through AsianCrit-informed counterstories of school segregation

Abstract

Purpose How can the author, as social studies methods instructors, assist future elementary teachers develop the knowledge and skills to engage young students in critical examinations of race and racism, and feel empowered to take action against racial oppression? The purpose of this paper is to share one of many possible ways of “doing race” in elementary social studies teacher education. Design/methodology/approach First, the author proposes the topic of school segregation as a relevant and engaging inroad for elementary students to learn about race and racism. Then, the author outlines and problematizes a dominant approach to teaching about school segregation in elementary classrooms and suggests an alternative approach informed by critical race theories. Next, the author provides counterstories to dispel the dominant narrative of school segregation from an Asian critical race theory perspective. This is followed by an explanation of the lesson the author teaches in the author’s elementary social studies methods course that utilizes these perspectives and counterstories. Findings By using Asian-American counterstories of school segregation, the lesson seeks to assist preservice elementary teachers in disrupting the dominant teaching practices and discourses around school segregation and helps preservice teachers develop the critical understandings and competencies needed to successfully teach about race and racism in elementary classrooms. Originality/value The author concludes by discussing the possibilities and implications of the lesson.

Critical What What? A Theoretical Systematic Review of 15 Years of Critical Race Theory Research in Social Studies Education, 2004–2019

“…Of the 59 studies we analyzed, at least 15 studies (25%) drew from CRT spinoffs. AsianCrit was the most commonly used CRT spinoff as a more recent body of literature produced over the last 5 years centered Asian American experiences with racism as produced in curriculum, picture books, and pedagogical practices (An, 2016, 2017a, 2017b; Rodríguez, 2018, 2019; Rodríguez & Kim, 2018). Scholars also drew from LatCrit (Noboa, 2013; Salinas et al, 2016; Rodríguez & Salinas, 2019; Vasquez, 2018), TribalCrit (Masta, 2015; Padgett, 2015), and BlackCrit (Griffin & James, 2018; L.…”

“…The tenet most clearly identified throughout the research was the centrality of racism in the United States (Bell, 1992ab), as the bulk of the literature mentioned racism’s nonaberrant nature in society (An, 2017a, 2017b, A. Brown & Brown, 2010a, 2010b; K.…”

“…Findings across this theme show that scholars dedicate significant attention to how teachers, both preservice and in-service, think about race and what this means for teaching and learning about citizenship. For example, eight studies employed CRT as a framework to contextualize how mainly White preservice teachers thought about race and then acted on these thoughts either through class discussion, curricular design, or field-based teaching experiences (An, 2017a, 2017b, 2018; Buchanan, 2016; Demoiny, 2017, 2018; Martell, 2017; Vasquez, 2018). Another nine studies illustrated how in-service teachers’ thinking about the relationship between race and citizenship impacted their pedagogical and curricular decision making (Chandler, 2009; Ender, 2018; Martell, 2013; Martell & Stevens, 2017a, 2017b, 2018; Noboa, 2013; Rodríguez, 2018, 2019).…”

Biography Writing Encourages Bilingual Adolescent’s Heritage Language Learning And Passing Down Of Family Stories

“…In this article, I present a critical view of my son's biography writing project using Asian Critical Race Theory (Museus & Iftlkar, 2013;Museus, 2014), which refers to "a perspective that outlines a unique set of tenets that are designed to provide a useful analytic framework for examining and understanding the ways that racism affects Asian Americans in the United States" (p. 23). An emerging body of work employed the AsianCrit to teacher education and K-12 school settings (An, 2017a(An, , 2017bKim & Hsieh, 2022;Rodríguez & Kim, 2018, 2019. I believe that Michael's DISCUSSION: MULTILINGUAL LIVES particular experiences may serve as a stepping stone for language and literacy educators to provide authentic opportunities for multilingual learners to use all of their languages in meaningful ways related to their lived experiences (Griffith et al, 2014;Rowe, 2018).…”

Race and language teaching

“…Many studies in this literature review relied heavily on the framing from CRT to examine different areas related to language teaching such as language pedagogy, language teacher education, and language education policy. CRT has also spawned several newer, interdisciplinary offspring that extend and problematize CRT through lenses of Southern theory, most notably theories shaped by knowledge of Latinx, indigenous, Asian, and South Asian communities through LatCrit (Solorzano & Bernal, 2001), TribalCrit (Brayboy, 2005), AsianCrit (An, 2017), and DesiCrit theories (Harpalani, 2013). Another progeny is LangCrit (Crump, 2014; Morita-Mullaney, 2018), a theoretical framing situated at the socially mediated intersection of race and language that considers how this intersection informs identities.…”