The contemporary movement for Asian American history education is deeply rooted in the broader historical struggle for Asian American Studies. Emerging as a formal academic discipline in the late 1960s, Asian American Studies was born from the activism of Black, Indigenous, Chicanx, and Asian American students during the 1968–1969 strikes at San Francisco State College and the University of California, Berkeley. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Asian American Studies saw significant national growth propelled by college student activism. In the wake of these first two waves of the Asian American movement, historian Erika Lee has described recent legislative mandates for Asian American education as its “third era,” now focused on K-12 education.

The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms highlights the various efforts to center Asian American experiences, narratives, and histories in K-12 classrooms across the United States. In states where legislative mandates have passed, there remain significant disorganization and challenges with providing the resources educators need to implement the mandated instruction. In particular, the lack of funding for curricular development and teacher professional development has left organizers and educators with few resources. This has resulted in uneven approaches that vary widely in terms of their criticality – an essential component of ethnic studies writ large. At the same time, there have been incredible successes and alternative approaches to creating Asian American-focused teaching and learning spaces, but few of these examples have been documented in scholarly journals due to the lengthy publication process and nascent nature of these movements.

The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms offers an innovative and intimate glimpse into the experiences of educators, organizers, and youth who insist on centering Asian America in and out of the classroom. In doing so, educators and youth will find examples of classroom practices and the impact of Asian American Studies on them personally and academically.

The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms will be targeted to academics, educators, and community organizers. For scholars of Asian American Studies broadly (including historians, sociologists, anthropologists, educators), this book will offer a rare glimpse into very recent efforts for Asian American Studies from the last five years and will be a vital addition to college, university, and public libraries. Among researchers and teacher educators interested in Asian American education, the chapters provide in-depth insight into contemporary Asian American Studies curriculum and instruction. Ethnic studies scholarship is largely published by researchers who have not participated in traditional teacher preparation and are unfamiliar with K-12 classroom praxis. The authors contributing to this volume consist of classroom teachers, their students, teacher educators, education scholars, and community organizers – that is, individuals who are deeply and directly involved in the day-to-day efforts to raise awareness, teach, and learn about Asian American Studies in public schools.

While more and more states continue to pass legislative mandates for the teaching of Asian American histories, few resources are available that highlight the critical consciousness, pedagogical challenges, and professional development necessary to bring such requirements to fruition. The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms can be adopted by instructors to address this gap in the field. The strategies, successes, and challenges described in this book will be a vital resource for those interested in promoting the teaching of Asian American Studies in their own schools, districts, communities, and states.

Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Asian American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Asian American Education; Asian American Studies & Education; Multicultural Education in the United States; Current Issues in Educational Policy; Current Issues in Social Studies Education