Trilingual Tibetans: Redefining What’s Possible

Just how pervasive among teachers, students, and communities are state-supplied narratives of what constitutes legitimate knowledge and academic achievement? Using an ethnographic approach to explore how Tibetan teachers and students in China conceptualize and negotiate the extremes of assimilation and exclusion, I analyze how nationally standardized schooling might engender both challenges to and opportunities affirming ethnic identity for minoritized peoples. This research also aims to inform the limits and possibilities of Critical Pedagogy in increasingly multicultural nation-states that are characterized by a plurality of lifeways and epistemologies.