UCLA releases AAPI Nexus Journal Special Issue on K-12 Education
Melany Dela Cruz-Viesca, melanyd@ucla.edu
For Immediate Use
(310) 206-7738
Los Angeles – As guest editors Peter Nien-chu Kiang (University of Massachusetts Boston) and Mitchell J. Chang (UCLA) write, “Asian American and Pacific Islander communities have individually and collectively invested enormous trust in US educational institutions on behalf of themselves and their children.” Nexus will release three new issues on education, the first of which will focus on K-12 Education. With significant economic struggles and budget cuts in this new decade, these issues will help to inform the education policies and changing AAPI populations.
Patricia Espiritu Halagao, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, and Joan May T. Cordova contributed a resource article that evaluates thirty-three examples of curricular resources by Filipina/o American educators during the past forty years in terms of critical content, instruction, and impact. Practitioners involved with school- and community-based curriculum development centered on the voices and experiences of ethnic-specific groups will want to consider the authors’ criterion-based critical review framework for their own purposes.
Next, Leena Her’s research article looks at the educational conditions facing English Learners within an urban California high school through an eighteen-month ethnography. Her analyzes how teachers and administrators “explain failure” within the school, particularly in relation to English learners, and shows how discourse, educational practice, and local/national assessment policies intersect with various day-to-day challenges facing English Learners and Hmong American students in low-performing schools.
Valerie Ooka Pang then describes how Asian American teacher beliefs and practices “explain success” in an urban California elementary school with similarly large numbers of Asian American and Latino students. Through interviews and observations, Pang finds that the effective Asian American teachers combine ethics of caring with culturally responsive instructional practices and dedicated attention to curricular content that align carefully with state and district standards.
Phitsamay Sychitkokhong Uy looks at Vietnamese and Chinese American high school students in an East Coast school district and how ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender are associated with these students dropping out of school. With the interplay between these factors, Sychitkokhong Uy finds that low-income Chinese and Vietnamese students that are boys have a harder time to graduate in 4 years; Chinese students also had higher odds of dropping out within four years in comparison to Vietnamese peers.
Jean Ryoo next provides a comprehensive review of the historically significant Asian Movement newspaper, Gidra (1969-1974), and how specific coverage of education and youth issues in Gidra during that time period reflect on contemporary AAPI educational issues. Ryoo offers lessons from Gidra about community organizing, activism, and documentation for readers today.
Finally, former bilingual teacher Lusa Lo contributes a practitioner’s essay on the problems with translating Individual Education Programs (IEPs) from English to Chinese for children with disabilities whose families do not read or speak English. Lo’s analysis reveals the critical need for trained bilingual practitioners to play greater roles in all aspects of special education services. Lo also argues for more studies to address other AAPI groups who also have disabilities combined with specific linguistic and cultural profiles.
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