Abstract
Abstract This paper is a self-reflective narrative of our teaching experience as two immigrant Asian female professors who teach Multicultural Education. Employing collaborative autoethnography (CAE), the study addresses the issues of authority, positionality, and legitimacy of knowledge claims in critical feminist pedagogy. Two research questions guided our inquiry: 1. How does a teacher’s racial positionality play out in exercising professional knowledge, and conversely, 2. How does seemingly neutral professional knowledge become racialized in the discussions of race? Major findings demonstrate the double-edged contradictions in the body/knowledge nexus manifested in our everyday teaching contexts. On the one hand, the bodily dimension of teacher knowledge is de-racialized because of institutional norms and cultures. On the other hand, there are times professional knowledge becomes racialized through the teacher’s body. Understanding the body/knowledge nexus that invites precarious power dynamics in racial discussions and even blatantly dismisses our professional knowledge, we, as an immigrant faculty of color, find it impossible to create a safe environment for participatory, critical discourse. Acknowledging our triple marginality, we put forth the concept of “pedagogy of fear” (Leonardo, Z., & Porter, R. K. (2010). Pedagogy of fear: Toward a Fanonian theory of ‘safety’ in race dialogue. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 13(2), 139–157) which squarely disrupts the idea of a safe environment in race dialog and urges teachers to confront their own/their students’ fear and create a space of teaching vulnerably.
Highlights
This paper is a self-reflective narrative of our teaching experience as two immigrant Asian female professors who teach Multicultural Education
When we introduced social justice topics in teacher education programs and other graduate classes addressing social inequity at a predominantly White institution (PWI), we set the tone in the beginning of each semester that we value and welcome everyone’s experiences, opinions, and perceptions as a valid intellectual quest
This paper is a self-reflective narrative of our teaching experience as a transnational, immigrant Asian female teacher who employed critical pedagogy for Multicultural Education in a predominantly White institution
Summary
Using our own teaching episodes and related self-reflection as the main sources of data this study naturally falls under the tradition of autoethnography in terms of its research design. Our engagement in collaborative autoethnography (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, 2012) was an unintended, yet natural and somewhat inevitable process stemmed from our long-term friendship and intellectual correspondence over the past 15 years Both authors landed on their first faculty position in 2012 in a predominantly White institution. We acknowledge that our stories and reflections have been primarily motivated by our desire to improve our relationships with students and facilitate students’ intellectual growth in class, especially their critical selfconsciousness and sense of agency As a result, this collaborative work presents a significant pedagogical implication for ourselves as well as those who may find themselves engage in intricate political and cultural dynamics with their students (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011) in their effort to materialize the idea of “critical pedagogy” in college classroom
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