Multicultural and cross‐cultural narrative inquiry into understanding immigrant students' educational experience in Hong Kong

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of narrative inquiry to contribute to an understanding of immigrant students' educational experience. Research on immigrant students' education is reviewed and the need for detailed examination of these students' experiences in schools, such as is done in a narrative inquiry, is demonstrated. Current trends in narrative inquiry that focus on multicultural and cross‐cultural phenomena are examined. Key questions that narrative inquirers engaged in international and comparative education need to consider are discussed. One narrative inquiry on Mainland Chinese immigrant students in Hong Kong is presented to demonstrate the particular qualities of this form of inquiry and its potential for understanding immigrant students' educational experience. Dilemmas and concerns associated with this form of inquiry are briefly addressed.

Keywords:

• multicultural
• cross‐cultural
• narrative inquiry
• immigrant students
• Mainland Chinese

Notes

1. This work is derived from a project funded by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Children from Mainland China, who have been in Hong Kong for less than six years, are referred to as Newly Arrived Children (NAC).

2. Pseudonyms are used for names of participants and places except for country and city names.

3. These issues, and related ones, are well discussed in the literature; e.g. Smith (1999) critiqued ‘western’ ways of engaging in research as contributing to colonization; Scheurich and Young (1997) discussed racial bias in all aspects of research including epistemological foundations; Milner (2007) discussed a research framework aimed at disrupting deficit discourses that has aspects in common with narrative inquiry.