Female faculty of color need mentoring opportunities that recognize, validate, and nurture their perspectives and experiences as assets-rather than liabilities-to their work. Among studies of faculty of color, there have not been specific studies focused on intragroup mentoring for Asian American female faculty. This collaborative autoethnographic study seeks to explore and unpack the complexities of intragroup mentoring for Asian American female faculty through the examination of a 6-year faculty mentoring relationship between two Asian American female faculty members in the teacher education department of a large public university. The authors examine how intersections and divergences related to their experiences as Asian American women in academia impacted their relationship, their acculturation processes in academia, and their subsequent successful advancements in rank over the course of their mentoring relationship. We argue that drawing from shared elements of our identities, and an awareness of the ways in which our experiences as Asian American women shaped our journeys in academia, helped to foster an enduring relationship that strengthens our work as faculty members. We also explore how differences in our identities (e.g., United States vs. foreign-born adult immigrant; Vietnamese American vs. Taiwanese American) and positionalities (e.g., first Asian American in the department, entering as nontenure track vs. tenure-track entry in a department with several established Asian American faculty) impacted our journeys, challenged us, and enriched our relationship to illuminate a more nuanced understanding of Asian Americans in academia. Through our experiences, we suggest how identityinformed mentorship can be a powerful tool to support acculturation in the academy, particularly for female faculty of color.
Previous work on new teacher professional identity has focused on identity as a process of negotiation between individual and contextual factors. These negotiations are often filled with a struggle between personal agency and structures that prevent the enactment of an ideal professional self. This study introduces and discusses three teacher professional identity orientations (self, classroom, and dialogic) and the implications of each orientation on a teacher's professional identity and classroom practice. While each focal teacher featured in the study drew from similar sources of professional identity (experiences as students, classroom practical experience, and theory/research), the teachers varied in the degree of importance accorded to each identity source. This variation led to differences in approach to their roles as teachers as well as differences in their work with students. Using a qualitative, comparative case study methodology to highlight features of each professional identity orientation, this study provides evidence of discourse related to each orientation and discusses implications of identity orientation in each case study teacher's classroom practice. After the discussion and analysis of the data, the author offers recommendations for teacher educators (pre-service and in-service) and researchers related to understandings of professional identity development and implications for the work of pre-service teacher education and continuing professional development.
In this article, the authors push back against “unnatural invisibility” and stereotypes of Asian American women by introducing a culturally informed coalitional resistance framework. Drawing from elements of Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) and AsianCrit, we use the framework to discuss the evolving microaggressions we have faced in teacher education spaces and how we have survived through them. We examine marginalizing experiences each of us has faced along multiple axes of oppression across our careers, the forms of resistance we could (or chose not to) enact in specific contexts and moments, and how, through coalitional resistance, we are reclaiming our collective right to thrive and be recognized for our contributions as teacher educators. We conclude by offering implications of coalitional resistance for fellow teacher educators of color and those who wish to support them.
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