In search of a story-weaving curriculum theory: Six principles for a narrative curriculum theory for Christian education for Asian American women, with special attention to Kwok Pui-Lan's postcolonial diasporic feminist theology
by Chang, Sung Hee, Ph.D., UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY & PRESBYTERIAN SCHOOL OF CHRISTIAN EDU., 2008, 207 pages; 3340600

Abstract:

The thesis of this study is that an appropriate Christian education curriculum for Asian American women focuses on their postcolonial context, diasporic social location, and storied identities. In the midst of their struggle with multiple realities of suffering in hope, it replaces the predominant mono-cultural meta-narrative with culturally constructed multiple narratives. It proposes an interdisciplinary narrative curriculum theory that is both culture-specific and cross-cultural.

Chapter 1 tells a story my existential search for Asian American women's self-understanding that developed into an academic investigation of a story-weaving curriculum theory is informed by Kwok Pui-lan's postcolonial diasporic feminist theology and evolves as a border-crossing and interdisciplinary curriculum theory.

Chapter 2 studies Kwok's life and work in terms of her postcolonial context, diasporic social location and storied identity and identifies her major contribution to this study—her promotion of a postcolonial diasporic feminist imagination that questions and challenges the colonial educational legacy of the West.

Chapter 3 critically reviews the binary colonial Western imagination and constructively describes a postcolonial diasporic feminist imagination that breaks the stranglehold of that colonial imagination and gives attention to storied identities of Asian American women in their postcolonial context and diasporic social location.

Chapter 4 explores storied identity from the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, and theology and draws out a relational, both/and, and multi-centered understanding of storied identity, focusing on the power of story to relate, connect, and weave the self and the world.

Chapter 5 introduces and analyzes two examples of story-weaving by Asian American women scholars, Kwok Pui-lan and Gale A. Yee. These examples show how to apply the concept of storied identity to a curriculum theory for Asian American women in their postcolonial context and diasporic social location.

Chapter 6 presents six principles that highlight the perspective of the reader, the use of critical incidents, and the interdisciplinary scope, and delineate the strategic educational measures of decolonization, destigmatization, and vocalization that address the postcolonial context, diasporic social location, and storied identities of Asian American women.

 
Advisor
SchoolUNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY & PRESBYTERIAN SCHOOL OF CHRISTIAN EDU.
SourceDAI/A 69-12, p. , Mar 2009
Source TypeDissertation
SubjectsWomen's studies; Religious education; Curriculum development
Publication Number3340600
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