Refracting historical contradictions in U.S. bilingual education: Reflections on the Asian American and Pacific Islander teacher shortage in the post-pandemic world

ABSTRACT

The post-pandemic world has witnessed a surge in linguistic racism; anti-Asian stigma has not only altered bilingual education but also created tensions for immigrant families and teachers from Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. In this conceptual article, Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie is employed to examine the historical contradictions of anti-Asian stigma refracted in educational contexts. Narratives and vignettes from publicly available Internet archival data are used to illustrate the contradictions. The author then offers reflections on the AAPI teacher shortage as related to these refractions and recommends the establishment of a more equitable pipeline for bilingual AAPI teachers.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions to improve the readability of this manuscript. This study is partially funded by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) Clinically-Rich Intensive Teacher Institute in Bilingual Education (CR-ITI-BE, 2019–2023) Grant (#C403289). Any opinions expressed reflect the views of the author’s alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the New York State Education Department [#C403289].