This qualitative study, using a single case design grounded in narrative inquiry and a life history approach, examines the pedagogical becoming of Maya (pseudonym), a Pa’O refugee-background transmigrant preservice teacher in the U.S. Rather than positioning Maya as a subject of research, this study centers her as a co-theorist of pedagogy whose lived experiences of refugeehood, racialization, and transnational marginalization offer critical insight into “critical caring” as a decolonial pedagogical stance. Data were generated through life history interviews, photo-elicitation, drawing prompts, and teaching artifacts—methods chosen to support multimodal meaning-making and honor epistemic justice. In line with decolonial scholarship, the research resists extractive methodologies and instead emphasizes co-constructed knowledge. This study illuminates how Maya enacts care not as sentimentality, but as politically and historically situated praxis. Her story disrupts dominant discourses of teaching as neutral and challenges Eurocentric ways of knowing and being. It also reveals how pedagogy can emerge from survival, resistance, and intergenerational knowledge rooted in Metta (a Buddhist ethic of deep love and selflessness). Ultimately, this work invites educators and researchers to reimagine caring as a critical, justice-oriented practice in teacher education, shaped by the lived experiences of those teaching from the margins.

Authors:
Jeong Yeon Park, California State University, Fullerton, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Jeong-Yeon Park is currently an Assistant Professor of Elementary and Bilingual Education at California State University, Fullerton.

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