Exploring Teacher Knowledge Through Personal Narratives [microform] : Experiences of Identity, Culture, and Sense of Belonging

Book excerpt: This study explores and makes meaning of personal experience to understand how it shapes and informs teacher knowledge or personal practical knowledge. Guided by Dewey's (1938) thinking that to study education and life is to study experience, I begin the inquiry of my personal practical knowledge by exploring my experiences of identity, culture, and sense of belonging. My experiences are rooted in China, the place of my birth, and shaped by the experience of my family's immigration to "Gold Mountain" or the United States. Growing up, I was criticized by my mother as a juk sing or a hollow bamboo who has the exterior appearance of being Chinese or Asian but is empty inside. To her I was devoid of the traditional and honored Chinese values and beliefs. My mother's characterization of me as a juk sing formed an indelible impression that serves as an originating and seminal question for this inquiry. This inquiry is a journey of self-awareness and discovery that contributes to exploring how personal experiential histories shape and inform teacher knowledge. The study is an invitation to all educators and policy makers to expand our understanding of cross-cultural complexities for an increasingly diversified and global community, and to develop culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally responsive teachers. Voices of participants integral to understanding my teacher knowledge include my parents, my village clan in China, my Chinese extended family in America, activists in the Asian American movement, my students, and my colleagues in teacher education in Hong Kong. My inquiry is a quest for understanding who I had become, how I became the person I am, and the person I am becoming that takes me to the soils of three landscapes: China, United States, and Hong Kong. I discover that my identity, culture, and sense of belonging are situated in what He (2003) has termed the "in-betweenness" of cross-cultural lives. I find that I am not a Chinese, nor an American, but a rich and complex blend of multiple identities that is evolving, improvised, and contested. "In-betweenness," I learn, is a place for tensions, challenges, discoveries, and transformations.