Linking strategies and interventions in Asian American Studies to K–12 classrooms and teacher preparation

Abstract

This article documents a series of programmatic strategies developed within an Asian American Studies Program at one urban public university to impact positively the education of K–12 students and teachers—especially, but not exclusively, those who are Asian American. The article first presents four critical challenges facing practitioners in the Asian American Studies field who wish to intervene more actively within the domain of K–12 education. These include the complex demographic realities of Asian American populations; the exclusion of Asian American Studies content in the K–12 curriculum; the limited flow of Asian Americans into the field of education; and the confounding impact of high-stakes testing across all these areas. The article then describes six specific interventions by a university-based Asian American Studies program that have ecologically supported Asian American teacher education and professional development as well as K–12 curriculum development, parent/family training and high school youth development.

Notes

* 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125-3393, USA. Email: [email protected]

Personal communication, 18 November 2001.

The 72% growth rate uses the Census 2000 population counts of Asian alone or in combination with other races. See: US Census Bureau (2002).

See: US Census Bureau (2000) ‘Table 1. Population by Age, Sex, and Race and Hispanic Origin’. Current Population Survey. March.

According to Francis Wardle, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Biracial Children, more than one million biriacial children (across all races) were born in the 1990s. See: Wardle (1999–2000). Also see: Maria P.P. Root & Matt Kelley (2003).

Richard Tessler and colleagues, for example, report that 10,630 Chinese children had been adopted by families in the US as of 1997. See: Tessler et al. (1997).

These numbers include figures from both the March 2000 Current Population Survey and Census 2000. They also do not capture foreign-born Asian American populations from countries outside of Asia such as Trinidad, Guyana, Brazil, France, Canada and elsewhere. See: US Census Bureau (2002) A Profile of the Nation's Foreign-Born Population from Asia (2000 Update), February.

See US Department of Education (1998), National Center for Education Statistics, Condition of Education 1998, Supplemental Table 43-2 and (1997) Digest of Education Statistics, 1997, Table 67.

US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (1996).

These tests are ‘high stakes’ when life-affecting decisions of student tracking, placement and graduation as well as teacher hiring and school funding become specifically tied to test results (US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 1999), even though evidence of test validity and reliability have rarely been demonstrated.

I acknowledge the contributions of the MAAEA board, including Regina Yee, Linda Wing and Vivian Lee who assisted in the NEH grant process, and especially Joan May T. Cordova whose conceptual, programmatic and evaluative contributions as the project's co-director I draw on in detail here.

Models for Asian American parent organizing, training and collaboration such as those developed through the exemplary seven-year National Asian Family/School Partnership Project, for example, should be shared and adapted. This project of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students (NCAS) was funded by the DeWitt Wallace–Reader's Digest Fund between 1992 and 1999. The project developed and documented models of collaboration between school districts including Chicago, Philadelphia, Des Moines, Seattle, Minneapolis and San Diego with various Asian immigrant communities. Among the numerous resources produced by the project, see: First and Te (1997).

Notable individuals in the Asian American Studies field who are deeply engaged in K–12 education reform include: Kenyon Chan, Chung Hoang Chuong, Yvonne Lau, Rajini Srikanth, Khatharya Um and Ling-chi Wang.