College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Term of Award

Summer 2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Digital Commons@Georgia Southern License

Department

Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading

Committee Chair

Ming Fang He

Committee Member 1

John Weaver

Committee Member 2

Sonia Janis

Committee Member 3

Alma Stevenson

Abstract

This dissertation explores my multiracial experience as a Filipino and Black woman educator living and teaching across multiple places--New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Georgia. Using critical mixed race/multiracial studies (e.g., Root, 1992, 1996; Zack, 1993; Spencer, 1999, 2006; Spickard, 1989, 2016; Harris, 2016; Rockquemore et al., 2008, 2009; McKibbin, 2014; O’Hearn, 2008; Dalmage, 2004; Ifekwunigwe, 2004; Janis, 2012, 2016) and influence of place (e.g., Anzaldua, 2012; Bhabha; 2012; hooks, 2009) as the theoretical framework and memoir as methodology (e.g., Barrington, 2002; Hamdan, 2012; Karr, 2015), I dive into my multiracial experience (e.g., Root, 1996; Evans & Evans, 2022; Ginsberg, 2017; Ifekwunigwe, 2004; Jackson, 2012; Janis, 2016; Kwan & Speirs, 2004; O’Hearn, 2008; Khanna, 2011; Rondilla et al., 2017) to interrogate monoracial paradigms, the black-white binary, and sense of belonging (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; hooks, 2008; Yuval-Davis, 2006) and unbelonging (e.g., He, 2025; Healy, 2020; Ahmed, 2014; Yuval-Davis, 2006) with the intent to illuminate how my multiracial experience can inform educators as they develop multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual empowering curricula (e.g., Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2021; Paris & Alim, 2017) to support multiracial students. Eight meanings have emerged from my dissertation inquiry: (1) Multiracial identities are not fixed or decontextualized; rather, they are fluid and evolve with lived experiences. (2) Belonging and unbelonging are central to the multiracial experience characterized by the feeling of being "in-between" without belonging to any monoracial groups, spaces, and places. (3) The multiracial experience is shaped by places and spaces intersected with languages, cultures, identities, races, ethnicities, genders, classes, powers, and histories. (4) Multiracial experience complicates conventional race categories and challenges the Black and White binaries. (5) Intersectionality is essential to understanding the multiracial experience because multiracial identities are produced through the simultaneous interaction of race, ethnicity, gender, class, culture, language, phenotype, geography, and systems of power rather than race alone. (6) Voices, stories, and memoirs are themselves acts of resistance to monoracial binaries. (7) The power of mixed race memoir, as a form of inquiry, lies in its narrative possibilities to capture the contradictions and paradoxes of mixed race/multiracial experience, to honor the subtleties, fluidities, and complexities of such experience, and to engender understanding towards mixed race/multiracial experience and contexts that shape and are shaped by such experience. (8) There is a demand for educators, students, parents, administrators, policy makers, and other educational workers to work together to cultivate a multiracially responsive/relevant/sustaining curriculum where multiracial/mixed race children have equal opportunities to thrive in education and life.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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Available for download on Wednesday, June 25, 2031

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