Disaggregating Asian Identities through Case Studies of High School Students in Electronic Textiles Classrooms

While most of the identity-related work within STEAM education has examined learners from different marginalized groups, Asians and Asian Americans are some of the least studied identities despite the underrepresentation of several Asian sub-groups within STEAM fields. Educational research has embraced the “model minority” myth, adopted a White-colonial gaze, aggregated Asians into a single “racial group”, and treated it as a dominant group within STEM fields. By resisting the White-centered, colonial simplifications and also conducting ways of engaging with learners that identify with Asian communities, we present four case studies of “Asian” high school students in two STEAM classrooms (which were both implementing an electronic textiles unit) in an attempt to disaggregate and to highlight the diversity and complications in the the otherwise simplified “Asian” identity. We answer the question of how electronic textiles projects support students’ “Asian” identity expression, negotiation, and development. We share how our cases accentuated the role of materiality and pedagogical context in opening possibilities for students to narrate stories of historical, cultural, and familial significance while navigating their complicated “Asian” (or not) identities. We discuss the implications of our findings for the research, design, and practice within STEAM activities to better support the highly diverse and invisibly marginalized Asian-origin students.