• 

  Sohyun An

• 

  Esther June Kim

• 

  Noreen Naseem Rodriguez

We are Asian American scholars, former classroom teachers, and current teacher educators who won the American Educational Research Association’s Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education) Innovations in Research Award in 2024. Learn more about individual publications and accomplishments below.

Sohyun An 

Favorite Comfort Foods: Every Korean dish my mom makes, particularly Chueotang, pajeon, sikhye 

Favorite Guilty Pleasures: K-dramas (romantic comedy in particular)   

 

Awards

2023 Outstanding Paper Award, Social Studies Research Special Interest Group (SIG), AERA

2023 Kipchoge Neftali Kirkland Social Justice Award, College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies. 

2022 Distinguished Researcher Award, Research on the Education of Asian Pacific Americans SIG, AERA

2022 Distinguished Professor Award, Kennesaw State University 

2022 Outstanding Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award, Bagwell College of Education, KSU

2021 Outstanding Research Award, Kennesaw State University 

2020 Outstanding Teaching Award, Kennesaw State University 

2016 Outstanding Faculty Early Career Award, Kennesaw State University 

2015 Career Service Adviser Award, Kennesaw State University 

 

Selected Publications 

• An, S. (2024). America’s long history of racializing epidemics: CRT critique and lesson for elementary classrooms. In D. Cook & N. Bryan (Ed.), Critical Race Theory and Classroom Practice (pp.23-33). Routledge. 
• Kim, Y. & An, S. (2024). “We are stronger than fear of hate”: a longitudinal study amplifying the voices of Asian American and migrant teachers amidst COVID-19. Race Ethnicity and Education.
• Rodríguez, N. N., An, S., & Kim, E. (2023). Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms. Routledge.
• An, S. (2023). “Our folks were badass!” Learning and dreaming in Basement. Rethinking Schools, 38 (1), 20-23. 
• An, S. (2023). Southeast Asian refugee children’s literature: A pedagogical tool to critically juxtapose war and migration. In A. Gunn & S. Bennett (Eds.), Teaching multicultural children’s literature in a diverse society (pp. 119-133). Routledge.   
• An, S. (2023). Asian American middle school students talk-back at white social studies amid anti-Asian violence during COVID-19 pandemic. Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, 31(1), 10-41. 
• An, S. (2022). AsianCrit critique of social studies curriculum. In A. Vickery & N. N. Rodríguez (Eds.), Critical Race Perspectives on Social Studies Education. Teachers College Press.
• An, S. (2022). The COVID-19 pandemic, racial literacy, and Asian Americans in the history curriculum. L. King (Ed.), Racial Literacy and history education (pp. 3-18). Teachers College Record.
• An, S. (2022). Navigating a curriculum of American exceptionalism: An Asian American child’s story. Multicultural Perspectives, 24(2), 62-74.
• An, S. (2022). Disrupting anti-Asian violence during epidemics: A C3 inquiry. Social Education, 86(2), 122-128.
• An, S. (2022). Teaching about the Vietnam War: Centering Southeast Asian refugee voices through children’s literature. Social Studies and Young Learner, 34(4), 24-32. 
• An, S. (2022). Critical juxtaposing of war and migration: A critical content analysis of Southeast Asian refugee children’s literature. The Social Studies, 113(5), 249-263. 
• An, S. (2022). Re/presentation of Asian Americans in 50 states US history standards. The Social Studies, 113 (4), 171-184. 
• Rodríguez, N. N. & An, S. (2022). Asian American narratives in U.S. history and contemporary society. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 34(3), 2. 
• An, S. & Rodríguez, N. N. (2021). Anti-Asian violence amid COVID-19 and implications to social studies education. In W. Journell (Ed.), Post-pandemic Social Studies: How Covid-19 Changed the World and How We Teach (pp. 163-174). Teachers College Press.
• An, S. (2022). Engaging with difficult knowledge of U.S. wars in elementary social studies methods course. The Social Studies, 113(1), 17-29. 
• An, S. (2022). Selective (un)telling of difficult knowledge of U.S. wars in children’s literature: The Korean War as a case study. The Social Studies, 113(2), 68-80.   
• Saylor, E., An, S., Buchanan, L. (2022). The First Amendment, religious freedom, and public schools in the South. The Social Studies, 113(3), 125-136. 
• An, S. (2021). Teaching difficult knowledge of the Korean War through international children’s literature. Social Studies and Young Learner, 33(3), 24-32. 
• An, S. (2021). Teaching about WWII in the Philippines with children’s literature and inquiry. Social Studies and Young Learner, 34(1), 10-15. 
• An, S. (2021). COVID-19 pandemic and lesson recommendation for social studies education. Social Education, 85(4), 198-204. 
• An, S. (2020). Disrupting curriculum of violence on Asian Americans. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 42(2), 141-156. 
• An, S. (2020). Racial literacy learning while navigating white social studies. The Social Studies, 111(4), 174-181. 
• An, S. (2020). First graders’ inquiry into multicolored stories of school (de)segregation. Social Studies and Young Learner, 32(3), 3-9. 
• Adams, E. & An, S. (2020). Thinking with theory in a civil rights center. Social Studies Research and Practice. 15 (2), 176-182. 
• An, S. (2018). Unpacking patriotism in an elementary social studies methods class. In S. B. Shear, C. M. Tschida, E. Bellows, L. B. Buchanan, & E. E. Saylor (Eds.), (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies: A Controversial Issues Reader (pp. 235-254). Information Age Pub INC.  
• An, S. (2018). Beyond the single story of Brown: Teaching multiracial histories of school (de)segregation. Social Studies Research and Practice, 13 (2), 199-223.
• An, S. (2018). A review of Korean American Education Studies: Disrupting a single story of model minority success. In R. Joo & S. Lee (Eds.), A companion to Korean American studies (pp. 418-446). Boston: Brill. 
• An, S. (2017). Teaching race through AsianCrit-informed counterstories of school segregation. Social Studies Research and Practice, 12(2), 210-231.
• An, S. (2017). AsianCrit perspective on social studies. Journal of Social Studies Research, 41
• (2), 131-139.
• Kim, J. & An, S. (2017). Rethinking stereotypes about Asian American students through learning history. Childhood Explorer. 
• An, S. (2016). Navigating higher education as an Asian immigrant female. In K. Brown, P. McHatton, M. Frazier, & T. Scott (Eds.), Faculty of color navigating higher education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• An, S. (2016). Asian Americans in American History: An AsianCrit perspective on Asian American representation in US history Curriculum Standards. Theory and Research in Social Education, 44(2). 244-276.
• Suh, Y., An, S., & Forest, D. (2015). Immigration, imagined communities, and collective memories of Asian American experiences: A content analysis of Asian American experiences in Virginia U.S. History textbooks. Journal of Social Studies Research, 39 (1), 39-51. 
• An, S. (2015). “We are more racist”: Early Study Abroad Korean students navigate race and racism in the United States. In A. Lo, N. Abelmann, S. Kwon, & S. Okazaki (Eds.). South Korea’s education exodus: The life and times of Early Study Abroad (pp. 209-227). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
• An, S. (2014). Preparing elementary teachers as global citizenship educators. Journal of Education. 194(2), 25-38.
• An, S. (2013). Transforming South Korean Education. In R. DeVillar, & B. Jiang (Eds.), Transforming education: Global perspectives, experiences and implications. New York, NY: Peter Lang. 
• Ritchie, S., Cone, N., An, S., & Bullock, P. (2013). Teacher education for social change: Transforming a content methods course block. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 15(2), 63-83.
• An, S., & Suh, Y. (2013). Simple yet complicated: U.S. history represented in South Korean history textbooks. The Social Studies, 104(2), 57-66. 
• An, S. (2012). Korean American high school students’ perspectives on US history. The Social Studies, 103 (1), 12-19.
• An, S. (2011). Global citizenship and global solidarity through Study Abroad: An exploratory case study of South Korean students. Journal of International Social Studies, 1(2), 21-34. 
• Choi, Y., An, S., & Lim, J.H. (2011). Marginalized students’ uneasy learning: Korean immigrant students’ experiences of learning social studies. Social Studies Research and Practice, 6(3), 1-17. 
• Lim, J.H., An, S., Choi, Y. & Yoon, S. Y. (2010). Research on Korean early-study-abroad youths’ adjustment: A multiple case study in the United States. Seoul, South Korea: National Youth Policy Institution. (Published in Korean)
• An, S. (2009). Learning U.S. history in an age of transnational migration. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41 (6), 763-787.

Esther June Kim 

Favorite Comfort Foods: Anything potato, cookies & cream ice cream, Tteok-bokki, my mom’s dduk-kuk

Favorite Guilty Pleasures: Great British Baking Show, candy corn, and Cadbury creme eggs

Selected Publications

 

• Kim, E. J. (2024). “No humans involved” revisited: What social studies educators might learn from Sylvia Wynter’s examination of Columbus and the Rodney King trial. In E. Adams, & B. Varga (Eds.), The Theory-Story Reader for Social Studies. Teachers College Press.
• Rodríguez, N. N., An, S., & Kim, E. (2023). Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms. Routledge.
• Kim, E. J., & Kassem, L. (2023). Feminist and liberatory voices in Islam and Christianity: Teaching diversity within religious faith. In A. Bodle, E. Bellows, E. Saylor, S. An, & L. Buchanan (Eds.), Religion, the first amendment and public schools: Stories from K-12 and teacher education classrooms. Information Age Publishing.
• Shatara, H., & Kim, E. J. (2022). The global color-line: Critical Race Theory and global citizenship education in conversation and in classrooms. In A. Vickery, & N. N. Rodríguez (Eds.), Critical race theory and social studies futures: From the nightmare of racial realism to dreaming out loud. Teachers College Press.
• Kim, E. J., & Falkner, A. (2022). “Not your model minority”: An inquiry on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Social Studies and the Young Learner.
• Kim, E. J. (2021). From “free white persons” to “illegal immigration”: Dilemmas of teaching U.S. immigration history. Ohio Social Studies Review. 
• Kim, E. J., Brown, A. L., & Robinson, H. T., Krueger, J. (2020) Allusive, Elusive, or
• Illusive?: An examination of apologies for the Atlantic slave trade and their pedagogical utility, Journal of Educational Controversy, 14(1). 
• Kim, E. J. (2018). Centers and Margins: Exploring Falwell and King’s conceptions of God as a way to understand religious tensions in a predominantly White, evangelical history classroom. The History Teacher.

Noreen Naseem Rodríguez 

Favorite Comfort Foods: Haleem, pancit, pandesal, cheese puffs

Favorite Guilty Pleasures: Point Break and reality TV (Love is Blind)

Awards

2024 Early Career Award, Association for Asian American Studies

2022 Outstanding Paper Award, Social Studies Research Special Interest Group (SIG), AERA

2021 Early Career Award, College & University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies

2021 Early Career Award, Research on the Education of Asian Pacific Americans SIG, AERA

2019 Early Career Award, Children's Literature Assembly, National Council for Teachers of English

2017 Larry Metcalf Exemplary Dissertation Award, National Council for the Social Studies

2010 Teacher of the Year, Dawson Elementary, Austin Independent School District

Selected Publications

• Rodríguez, N. N., An, S., & Kim, E. (2023). Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms. Routledge.
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2023). For whom should America’s gates be open? An immigration inquiry about Chinese in the 1800s & Angel Island. In S. Waring (Ed.), Using Inquiry to Prepare Students for College, Career, and Civic Life. National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2023). What does a U.S. citizen “look like”? What does it mean to be loyal to your country? Two civics inquiries about Japanese American incarceration. In S. Waring (Ed.), Using Inquiry to Prepare Students for College, Career, and Civic Life. NCSS.
• Rodríguez, N. N. & Swalwell, K. (2022). Social Studies for a Better World: An Anti-oppressive Approach for Elementary Educators. W.W. Norton. 
• Rodríguez, N. N. & An, S. (2022). Asian American narratives in U.S. history and contemporary society. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 34(3), 2. 
• Rodríguez, N. N. & Kim, E. (2022). The audacity of equality: Disrupting the invisibility of Asian America. In W. Au, N. H. Merchant, & S. Shear (Eds.), Insurgent Social Studies (pp. 55-74). Meyer.
• An, S. & Rodríguez, N. N. (2021). Anti-Asian violence amid COVID-19 and implications to social studies education. In W. Journell (Ed.), Post-pandemic Social Studies: How Covid-19 Changed the World and How We Teach (pp. 163-174). Teachers College Press.
• Rodríguez, N. N. & Kim, E. J. (2021). Beyond the model minority and forever foreigner: Asian American children’s nonfiction. In T. Crisp, S. Knezek, & R. P. Gardner (Eds.), Reading and Teaching with Diverse Nonfiction Children’s Books: Representations and Possibilities (pp. 58-78). National Council of Teachers of English. 
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2021). Moving Asian American history from the margins to the middle in elementary social studies classrooms. Annals of Social Studies Education Research for Teachers, 2(3), 35-42.
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2021). “'They were just living their lives': Reconceptualizing civic identity, membership, agency in second grade social studies." In M. Winn & L. Winn (Eds.), Transformative Justice in Education (pp. 137-146). Harvard Educational Press.
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2020). "Invisibility is not a natural state for anyone": (Re)Constructing narratives of Japanese American incarceration in elementary classrooms. Curriculum Inquiry, 50(4), 309-329. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2020.1831369
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2020). Focus on friendship or fights for civil rights? The challenges of teaching Japanese American incarceration with The Bracelet. Bank Street Occasional Papers, 44(Article 6), 48-59. 
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2020). "This is why nobody knows who you are": (Counter)Stories of Southeast Asian Americans in the Midwest. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 42(2), 157-174. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2020.1757377
• Rodríguez, N. N. & Kim, E. J. (2019). Asian and American and always becoming: The (mis)education of two Asian American teachers. Oregon Journal of the Social Studies, 7(1), 67-81.
• Naseem Rodríguez, N. (2019). Caught between two worlds: Asian American elementary teachers' enactment of Asian American history. Educational Studies, 55(2), 214-240. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2018.1467320
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2018). From margins to center: Developing cultural citizenship education through the teaching of Asian American history. Theory & Research in Social Education, 46(4), 528-573. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2018.1432432
• Rodríguez, N. N. & Kim, E. J. (2018). In search of mirrors: An Asian Critical Race Theory content analysis of Asian American picturebooks from 2007-2017. Journal of Children's Literature, 44(2), 16-33.
• Nie, P. & Rodríguez, N. N. (2018). Asian Americans and the civil rights movement. In W. G. Blankenship (Ed.), Teaching the struggle for civil rights (pp. 83-93). Peter Lang.
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2017). "But they didn't do nothin' wrong!": Teaching about Japanese American Incarceration. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 30(2), 17-23.
• Rodríguez, N. N. & Ip, R.^ (2017). Hidden in history: (Re)Constructing Asian American history in elementary social studies classrooms. In S. B. Shear, C. M. Tschida, E. Bellows, L. B. Buchanan, & E. E. Saylor (Eds.), (Re)Imagining elementary social studies: A controversial issues reader (pp. 319-340). Information Age.
• Rodríguez, N. N. (2017). Not all terrorists: A teacher educator's approach to teaching against Islamophobia and for religious tolerance. In S. B. Shear, C. M. Tschida, E. Bellows, L. B. Buchanan, & E. E. Saylor (Eds.), (Re)Imagining elementary social studies: A controversial issues reader (pp. 129-152). Information Age.

Rodríguez, N. N. (2015). Teaching Angel Island through historical empathy and poetry. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 27(3), 22-25.