Guiding Values, Principles, and Outcomes of Ethnic Studies Teaching
Given the range and complexity of the field, it is important to identify the key values and principles of Ethnic Studies as a means to offer guidance for the development of Ethnic Studies courses, teaching, and learning. The foundational values of Ethnic Studies are housed in the conceptual model of the “double helix” which interweaves holistic humanization and critical consciousness. Humanization includes the values of love, respect, hope, solidarity, and is based on the celebration of community cultural wealth.
The values rooted in humanization and critical consciousness shape the following guiding principles for Ethnic Studies teaching and learning. These are the guiding values and principles each Ethnic Studies lesson should include. Ethnic Studies courses, teaching, and learning will:
1. Cultivate empathy, community actualization, cultural perpetuity, self-worth, self determination, and the holistic well-being of all participants, especially Native People/s and people of color;
2. Celebrate and honor Native People/s of the land and communities of color by providing a space to share their stories of struggle and resistance, along with their intellectual and cultural wealth;
3. Center and place high value on pre-colonial, ancestral, indigenous, diasporic, familial, and marginalized knowledge;
4. Critique empire, white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society;
5. Challenge imperialist/colonial hegemonic beliefs and practices on ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized levels;
6. Connect ourselves to past and contemporary resistance movements that struggle for social justice on global and local levels to ensure a truer democracy;
7. Conceptualize, imagine, and build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promote collective narratives of transformative resistance, critical hope, and radical healing.
R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, “The Ethnic Studies Framework, A Holistic Overview” in R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Miguel Zavala, Christine Sleeter, and Wayne Au, eds. Rethinking Ethnic Studies (Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, 2019), 65–75. ~ Tara Yosso, 2005. “Whose culture has capital?” in Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. ~ Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and Edward Curammeng, “Pedagogies of Resistance: Filipina/o Gestures of Rebellion Against the Inheritance of American Schooling,” in Tracy Buenavista and Arshad Ali, eds., Education At War: The Fight for Students of Color in America (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2018), 233–238.
The values rooted in humanization and critical consciousness shape the following guiding principles for Ethnic Studies teaching and learning. These are the guiding values and principles each Ethnic Studies lesson should include. Ethnic Studies courses, teaching, and learning will:
1. Cultivate empathy, community actualization, cultural perpetuity, self-worth, self determination, and the holistic well-being of all participants, especially Native People/s and people of color;
2. Celebrate and honor Native People/s of the land and communities of color by providing a space to share their stories of struggle and resistance, along with their intellectual and cultural wealth;
3. Center and place high value on pre-colonial, ancestral, indigenous, diasporic, familial, and marginalized knowledge;
4. Critique empire, white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society;
5. Challenge imperialist/colonial hegemonic beliefs and practices on ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized levels;
6. Connect ourselves to past and contemporary resistance movements that struggle for social justice on global and local levels to ensure a truer democracy;
7. Conceptualize, imagine, and build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promote collective narratives of transformative resistance, critical hope, and radical healing.
R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, “The Ethnic Studies Framework, A Holistic Overview” in R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Miguel Zavala, Christine Sleeter, and Wayne Au, eds. Rethinking Ethnic Studies (Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, 2019), 65–75. ~ Tara Yosso, 2005. “Whose culture has capital?” in Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. ~ Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and Edward Curammeng, “Pedagogies of Resistance: Filipina/o Gestures of Rebellion Against the Inheritance of American Schooling,” in Tracy Buenavista and Arshad Ali, eds., Education At War: The Fight for Students of Color in America (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2018), 233–238.