Shin co-edits book, ‘Counternarratives from Asian American Art Educators’

Professor Ryan Shin has published a co-edited book through Routledge, “Counternarratives from Asian American Art Educators: Identities, Pedagogies, and Practice Beyond the Western Paradigm.”

It’s his second book released this year – and he was the leading editor on both.

An e-book for “Counternarratives” is available now, and the hard copy will be out soon. Shin’s co-editors are Maria Lim, Oksun Lee and Sandrine Han.

“Counternarratives” collects and explores the professional and pedagogical narratives of Asian art educators and researchers in North America, according to Shin. Few studies published since the substantial immigration of Asian art educators to the United States in the 1990s have addressed their professional identities in higher education, K-12, and museum contexts. By foregrounding narratives from Asian American arts educators within these settings, this edited volume enacts a shift from Western, Eurocentric perspectives to the unique contributions of Asian American practitioners, Shin said.

In short, the book highlights the voices and experiences of Asian art educators and serves as a scholarly resource for exploring their identity formation, construction, and development of a historically underrepresented minoritized group in North America.

Shin contributes to the introduction and is the author of Chapter 6, “Decolonization in Art Education Theory and Practices.”

“My narrative delineates the transformative process of an art educator from an oppressed scholar who regurgitated Eurocentric and White art education theories as orthodox knowledge,” Shin says, “to a critical art education scholar who challenges and problematizes dominant Western pedagogy.

“Specifically, I describe the three stages of my pedagogical development as a counternarrative from an international graduate student who was immersed in self-colonization,” Shin says, “to an early career art education professor who introduced ethnic minority visual culture into the art classroom and contributed to establishing an NAEA issue group, Asian Art and Culture Interest Group … and finally to an Asian American art educator who develop Asian critical pedagogy (ACP) as a new lens to challenge White master pedagogy in the field of art education.”

Shin also co-edited the 2022 book, “Borderless: Global Narratives in Art Education,” with Karen Hutzel.

In spring 2022, Shin received the COMC J. Eugene Grigsby Jr. Award from the National Art Education Association. The award, from the Committee on Multiethnic Concerns, honors individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of art education in advancing and promoting education, investigation, and celebration of cultural and ethnic heritage within our global community.