Voices of the invisible: Education policy promoting Asian American youths (original) (raw)

"Asian Americans and Education"

Chang, B. (2017). Asian Americans and education. In G. W. Noblit (Ed.), The Oxford research encyclopedia of education (pp. 1-39). Oxford University. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.102, 2017

(full version) A review article on the state of educational research concerning communities that are included under the Asian American umbrella category. Abstract and Contents The communities that constitute the racialized category of Asian Americans consist of approximately 20 million people in the United States, or about 5% of the total population. About 20% or 4 million are of primary or secondary school age, and over 1.1 million are in higher education. Both in popular and academic discourse, “Asian American” generally refers to people who have ethnic backgrounds in South Asia (e.g., Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Southeast Asia (e.g., Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam), and East Asia (e.g., China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan). As “Asian American” is an umbrella term used to categorize a very diverse, heterogeneous, and transnational set of populations, Asian Americans as a group present various challenges to education and research in and about the United States. These challenges can concern paradigms of achievement, citizenship, family involvement, access (e.g., higher education, bilingual education), language and culture, race and ethnicity, and school community. In order to address these paradigmatic challenges, a great deal of scholarship has called for a disaggregation of the data on populations that fall under the pan-ethnic “Asian America” umbrella term, to gain a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the many diverse populations and their historical, cultural, economic, and political experiences. To further address the problematic framing of Asian Americans in education and related fields, scholars have applied critical lenses to key tensions within conceptualization, policy, curriculum, and pedagogy. More recently, the notions of intersectionality and transnationalism have been generative in the study of Asian Americans, within not only educational research but also Asian American studies, which generally falls under the field of ethnic studies in the U.S. context, but has also been categorized under American studies, cultural studies, or Asian studies. While characterizations of Asian Americans as “the Model Minority” or “the Oppressed Minority” persist, the relevance of such static binaries has increasingly been challenged as the Asian American populations and migrations continue to diversify and increase. Contents: I. Introduction II. Demographics and Naming of Asian America (Key Demographics, History and Politics of Naming) III. Key Tensions within Education (Existing Conceptualizations, Intersectionality and Transnationalism) IV. Moving Forward (Current Issues, Next Steps and Pedagogies) V. Further Reading

Minority within a Minority Paradox: Asian Experiences in Latino Schools & Communities

Multicultural Education, 2013

Sarai Koo recently earned a Ph.D. degree in the College of Educational Studies at Chapman University, Orange, California. Trisha S. Nishimura is an assistant professor in the Department of Education at Whittier College, Whittier, California. cans and Latina/os—are pigeon-holed with particular sterotypical characteristics that often do not accurately describe them in general or in particular. In addition, we believe strongly that as minority groups who experience racial oppression, albeit in different ways, Asian Americans and Latina/os could and should be strong partners in the fight for social justice and equity. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), we report on narratives of education collected from three young Asian women living in and attending a predominately Latina/o community and school. We explored how Asians and Latina/o groups intersect in a majority minority community. Specifically, we sought to understand:

Asian American and Pacific Islanders Serving Institutions: The Motivations and Challenges behind Seeking a Federal Designation

Higher Education, 2009

This article examines the development of legislation to create a federal designation for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) serving institutions. Specifically, the article draws from interviews with nineteen policy makers, congressional staffers, and community advocates in order to address their motivations for establishing this designation and the related challenges that they encountered. Besides the complexities of ushering legislation through Congress, one of the major challenges highlighted includes the lack of political infrastructure for advocating Asian American issues related to education. Recommendations for the future sustainability of federal support for AAPI serving institutions are also discussed.

An Invisible Crisis. The Educational Needs of Asian Pacific American Youth

1997

An urgent educational crisis threatens the futures of a growing number of Asian Pacific American students, both immigrant and American-born. This crisis is largely invisible to most Americans, even to many in the teaching profession, because many see all Asian Pacific American students as members of a model minority destined to excel. This image is a destructive myth for the many Asian Pacific American children the schools are failing. The number of Asian Pacific American students is large and growing rapidly, and the context for educating these students effectively is changing. While immigrants who came to this country after 1965 were well-educated and well-off, more recent groups of Asian Pacific Americans are poor and poorly educated. The schools' task is complicated by historic problems of poverty and racial discrimination. Language and literacy issues are foremost in the problems of these students. In addition, most schools do not have curricula appropriate to educate multilingual and multicultural student populations. Support for families and youth development is inadequate. Community groups and foundations can offer much-needed support to school's efforts to help this underserved population. Recommendations for foundation help to Asian Pacific American students center on: (1) community/school/family partnerships; (2) institutional change and accountability; (3) curriculum development; (4) language development research and programs; and (5) teacher recruitment and training. Appendixes lists 19 resource organizations for program information and 13 other resource organizationS. (Contains 4 tables, 2 graphs, and 61 references.) (SLD)