How Asian American Female Teachers Experience Racial Microaggressions from Pre-service Preparation to Their Professional Careers

This study investigated how ten Asian American female classroom teachers experienced racial microaggressions (Ong et al. in J Couns Psychol 60(2):188–199, 2013; Sue et al. in Cult Divers Ethn Minor Psychol 13(1):72–81, 2007; Sue in Microaggressions in everyday life: race, gender, and sexual orientation. Wiley, Hoboken, 2010) from their initial-licensure preparation to professional careers as classroom teachers. The findings will focus on three major themes that exemplified how their experiences with racial microaggressions also intersected with gendered dynamics based on their identities as Asian American women: (a) making sense of institutional “cultures of Whiteness” (Lee in Up against whiteness: race, school and immigrant youth. Teachers College Press, New York, 2005, pp. 30–31), (b) encounters with racialized sexualization, (Lee and Vaught in J Negro Educ 72:457–466, 2003) and (c) specific examples where they were racialized as foreigners (Tuan in Forever foreigners or honorary whites? The Asian ethnic experience today. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1998) that also included incidents where Asian cultures were pathologized. Recommendations address implications for teacher-preparation programs and K-12 schools. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.