Becoming a “Model Minority”: Acquisition,Construction and Enactment of American Identity for Korean Immigrant Students

While the “model minority” stereotype of Asian Americans and its negative effects has been documented elsewhere, relatively little attention has been paid to how recent Asian immigrant students begin to embrace the stereotype while in schools. This study explores the identity formation process for a group of recent Korean immigrant students as “model minority” in an urban high school to empirically document the process. Through interviews and observations, I learned that the immigrants acquired an unauthentic American identity as a racial minority, constructed their status as “model minority” in response, and enacted the stereotype as they sanctioned those who couldn’t live up to the stereotype. The aim is to add to the body of knowledge on the school experiences of recent Asian immigrants.     

Burden of Acting Neither White Nor Black: Asian American Identities and Achievement in Urban Schools

Ogbu’s theory of “burden of acting white” has been one of the most frequently cited studies to explain black and white achievement gap. However, emerging studies have argued that Ogbu’s theory may be limited when examining variability of school achievement among black and white students. Research shows that in addition to culture, other social forces, such as class, peer networks, and school context may play a significant role when accounting for minority students’ academic aspirations and achievement. In the midst of this on-going debate, however, there is a limited understanding of how, if at all, theory of “acting white” plays a role for racial groups other than black and white students. By extending the discussion beyond a black-and-white discourse, this research examines how Asian American students in two different social and economic contexts, negotiate their race and ethnic identities. Framed by a prevalent model minority stereotype that conflates Asian Americans with whiteness, the findings show that portrayal of Asian “success” much like black “failure” cannot be explained solely on their cultural orientation. By comparing experiences of two groups of Korean American students—both high- and low-achieving—in different economic and school contexts, this study illustrates how the two groups of Korean American students adopt different racial strategies depending on their socioeconomic backgrounds, peer networks, and school contexts. Using Korean American students in urban schools as a case study, this research complicates and challenges our understanding of the role of culture in school achievement and illustrates how culture intersects with class, race, and schools. Jamie Lew is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Education, Rutgers University-Newark, 110 Warren Street, Newark, NY, 07102-1814, USA     

High School Course-Taking and Post-Secondary Institutional Selectivity

Race shapes many aspects of students’ high school experiences that are relevant to the college admissions process. We examine the racially-specific effects of high school course of study on college selectivity. Using NELS 1988–1994, we test how race and track interactively predict the prestige of the first post-secondary institution attended. We find support for a “redemptive equity model” of college prestige for Latinos, who attend more selective colleges than White students, net of background and academic variables. Asian American students also attend more selective institutions than White students. Results for African-American students are more complicated, in that the colleges they attend are not significantly different from those of Whites, on average. When we exclude students who attend historically Black colleges and universities, however, African-American students attend significantly more prestigious universities than Whites, net of other factors. We also find racially-specific effects of high school course of study, with Latinos, Asian Americans, and African-Americans appearing to benefit more from taking more rigorous academic courses than Whites.     

Ethnic and Panethnic Asian American Identities: Contradictory Perceptions of Cambodian Students in Urban Schools

This article examined the various ethnic identities of Cambodian students, a group often perceived by the larger society through the lens of the model minority stereotype but often endure low expectations from teachers and counselors in their local high schools. Our findings suggested that a Cambodian identity was often considered a stigmatized label and students identified as Cambodian were essentialized into the discourse of urban low achieving and culturally deficient minority students. Cambodian students’ identities in the less selective academic programs were often quite visible to teachers. This characterization was often coupled with a panethnic representation of Asian American students in selective programs who were considered motivated and supported by advantageous home and cultural values. In these contexts, teachers preferred to discuss Cambodian students in panethnic terms, ignoring students’ ethnic backgrounds, described their Cambodian students as part of their “bright Asian students” group. Overall, this study extends other works on Asian American ethnicity and panethnicity by focusing on the conflicting identities that affect the schooling of Cambodian students. These analyses complicate further the static notion of Asian American students as model minorities by emphasizing the fluid, problematic, and contextually-based nature of the construct.     

“I have to be three steps ahead”: Academically Gifted African American Male Students in an Urban High School on the Tension between an Ethnic and Academic Identity

This case study investigation of three Academically Gifted African American male high school seniors in a predominantly African American urban high school examines the interplay between their ethnic and academic identity. Using an embedded micro-ethnographic approach, we explore the extent to which these students value educational attainment, the extent to which they connect with their ethnicity, and those “significant others” who inhibit or dissuade the development of their ethnic and/or academic identity. Consistent with the conclusions of more recent educational literature, findings indicate participants in this investigation value the purpose and intent of schooling and the mobility associated with it, express “Blackness” is an essential component of their academic achievement and overall self concept, and credit people within their immediate social network for opening their eyes to social injustices within the world at an early age. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

“I am smart and I am not joking”: Aiming high in the middle years of schooling

In this paper, we draw on accounts from students to inform a Middle Schooling movement that has been variously described as “arrested”, “unfinished” and “exhausted”. We propose that if the Middle Schooling movement is to understand the changing worlds of students and develop new approaches in the middle years of schooling, then it is important to draw on the insights that individual students can provide by conducting research with “students-as-informants”. The early adolescent informants to this paper report high hopes for their futures (despite their lower socioeconomic surroundings), which reinforces the importance of supporting successful learner identities and highlights the role of schooling in the decline of adolescent student aspirations. However, their insights did not stop at the individual learner, with students also identifying cultural and structural constraints to reform. As such, we argue that students may be both an important resource for inquiry into individual school reform and for the Middle Schooling movement internationally.     

Doing time—Killing time at school: An examination of the perceptions and allocations of time among teacher-defined at-risk students

“Doing time” is an expression that is generally associated with prisoners who are disconnected from society and find themselves counting the days and minutes until their release from prison. In many respects, at-risk students attending our nation's large, urban, inner-city middle and high schools also consider themselves as not being connected to school or society and to be “doing time” in the classroom. Qualitative and subjective impressions of doing time at school have become the theme of many movies, books, and research articles. This study extends this qualitative type of research by quantitatively framing time allocation preferences and temporal dominance characteristics for a large sample of teacher-perceived “at-risk” students at several large urban high school sites. A sample of normal attaining students at the same school site served as a comparison group. The findings of this research effort generally support other more qualitative studies and indicate that there are strong preferences in at-risk students toward nondirected time-consuming activities (i.e., hanging out, video games, watching TV, etc.) with low-directed to nondirected time preference ratios. Normal attaining students had the reverse pattern, i.e., higher-directed to nondirected time preference ratios and higher preferences toward directed time-consuming activities that might be associated with investments in the schooling process (homework, studying, personal development, etc.). Interpretation of the circles test, a projective psychological procedure for establishing temporal dominance for at-risk students, revealed a general lack of recognition and connectiveness between past, present, and future events in their life and weak temporal dominance or orientation toward the future.     

Does Doing Scientific Research in High School Correlate with Students Staying in Science? A Half-Century Retrospective Study

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has declared in an advertising campaign that “you can’t start young enough” in science. However, there is no long-term data evaluating the effect of early exposure to original scientific research on producing career scientists. To address this issue, we examined a hands-on summer science research program for high school students that ran from 1958 to 1972. We compared participants in that program with science students that only began their hands-on research experience once in university. Our data indicate that students who are interested in science and have an opportunity to participate in original scientific research while in high school are significantly more likely (p < .005) to both enter and maintain a career in science compared to students whose first research experience didn’t occur until university. Our data suggest that more hands-on high school science research programs could help increase the number of students entering and maintaining scientific careers, relieving the growing concern that North America is losing its leadership status in the international scientific community.     

Reading,metacognition and motivation: A follow-up study of German students in Grades 7 and 8

This follow-up study to van Kraayenoord and Schneider (1999) examined the performance in reading, metacognition and motivation related to reading of students in Grades 7 and 8. Results showed significant correlations between all of the variables. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that “good” and “poor” readers differed in reading self-concept and metacognitive measures related to reading and memory. A stepwise regression analysis suggested that the metacognitive variables were the best predictors of reading. Furthermore, a comparison of the results of the previous study with those of the current investigation revealed that the findings were stable over time. Since the period between the two studies is the time during which students make important decisions related to enrolment in one of three distinct school-types in Germany, we examined the results of various groups of students: those in “Gymnasium” (high educational track), “Realschule” (middle educational track), and “Hauptschule” (low educational track). Students in the Gymnasium scored significantly better than students in the other two groups on almost all variables related to reading. A re-analysis of the data from our first investigation found that the results of the Gymnasium students in the second study could be predicted from their results obtained during elementary school.     

The second promise ofbrown

This article describes the cultural consequences of the local school closing in a predominantly black community (Centerville) as a result of desegregation policies. Based on oral accounts of community members, the author unearths the diverse functions the former all-black school used to have in the community. Furthermore, the possible reasons for the nostalgia with which the community remembers its “own” school are analyzed. It is shown why the predominantly white schools to which today's students are bused cannot possibly “pass the test” of comparison with the former community school. And finally, the article reminds us of two promises ofBrown, only one of which has been fulfilled in the case of Centerville. While racial segregation of schooling was indeed abolished in Centerville, the second promise ofBrown—providing equal educational opportunities for all children irrespective of race—remains elusive at best. And the very institution that would be central to fulfilling the second promise ofBrown—a school for which the town feels a sense of ownership—was closed for the sake of desegregation. Parts of this article have been the basis for an oral presentation at the South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society meeting, Richmond, VA, October 1993, and are published in the SAPES Proceedings, 1993, pp. 109–114.     

Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts: The Figured World of Smartness in the Lives of Marginalized, Urban Youth

How smartness is defined within schools contributes to low academic achievement by poor and racial/ethnic minority students. Using Holland et al.’s (1998) [Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (Eds.) (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.] concept of “figured worlds,” this paper explores the “figuring” of smartness through the perspectives of marginalized youth. The youth made key distinctions between being book smart vs. street smart. This distinction is a direct challenge by the youth to the dominant discourse of smartness or “book smarts” as it operates in schools. To the youth, “street smarts” are more important because they are connected to being able to maneuver through structures in their lives such as poverty, the police, street culture, and abusive “others.” This distinction is key because street smarts stress agency in countering social structures whereas, for many of the youth, book smarts represented those structures, such as receiving a high school diploma. Implications for schools and pedagogy are discussed. B.A. earned from Indiana University – Bloomington, Masters and Ph.D. earned from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Beth Hatt Fis an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Foundations at Illinois State University where she teaches research methods and social foundations of education. Her current research explores smartness as a cultural construct in schools and the media.     

Global Social Responsibility: Developing a Scale for Senior High School Students in Japan

This research was conducted with the aim of clarifying a concept of “global social responsibility.” A total sample of 395 senior high school students in Japan responded to a pool of items mostly adapted from a scale developed by Starrett (1996) and provided additional data concerning their social experiences. The data were used in the development of a Japanese version of the Global Social Responsibility (GSR) scale. It was found that “global altruism,” “active involvement with society,” and “understanding of interdependence” constituted a construct of global social responsibility. It was also found that females, those who discussed social problems with their family, those who revealed a high awareness of responsibility and those who had multiple experiences of volunteer activities for community service showed high GSR scores. The scale provides both an awareness of the concept and a measure for determining levels of global social responsibility. Counseling professionals are encouraged to consider their roles from a global and social perspective, with the notion of responsibility being seen as central to the concepts of freedom and personal development.     

Increasing Diversity in Science and Health Professions: A 21-Year Longitudinal Study Documenting College and Career Success

Despite decades of precollege science education programs, African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans remain critically underrepresented in science and health professions. This report describes college and career outcomes among graduates of the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program (SMYSP), a 5-week summer residential program for low-income high school students among whom 97% have been followed for up to 21 years. Approximately 24 students are selected annually, with participation limited to low-income students who have faced substantial personal hardships. Undergraduate and medical students provide key program leadership and training. The curriculum is based on science inquiry education and includes hospital internships, anatomy practicums, research projects, faculty lectures, college admissions/standardized test preparation, and long-term college and career guidance. A total of 476 high school students participated between 1988 and 2008, with 61% from underrepresented ethnic minority groups. Overall, 78% of African American, 81% of Latino, and 82% of Native American participants have earned a 4-year college degree (among those admitted to college, and excluding those currently attending college). In contrast, among 25–34-year old California adults, 16% of African Americans, 8% of Latinos, and 10% of Native Americans earn a 4-year college degree. Among SMYSP’s 4-year college graduates, 47% are attending or have completed medical or graduate school, and 43% are working as or training to become health professionals. SMYSP offers a model that expands inquiry-based science education beyond the classroom, and recognizes the role of universities as “high school interventionists” to help diversify health professions.     

Articulation,transfer, and student choice in a binary post-secondary system

This paper investigates the intersection of system articulation, transfer, and the choices that secondary school students make when they apply to college and university. The investigation is based on the results of a study that was undertaken to determine factors that influence choices that secondary school students make between enrolling in community college or university, and in particular whether or not those choices are affected by the degree of “articulation” within a public system of post-secondary education. There are several studies that have emerged recently in the United States and Canada that examine factors that influence the choice of university and 4-year college. There are a few studies that examine the choice of community and 2-year college. None, however, either in Canada or in the United States, has sought to examine “college choice” comparatively among students who apply to baccalaureate (4-year colleges and universities) and sub-baccalaureate (community colleges) programs. This study examines college choice on the basis of two series of longitudinal surveys conducted in the province of Ontario since the late 1980s, and on a series of surveys and interviews of students, parents and guidance counselors in six secondary schools, each with a different student population, since 2004. The third study—called the “college choice” project—tracked secondary school students as they made decisions about attending college or university, and as they finally selected the institutions that they would attend. The study concludes that greater conventional articulation will not significantly affect rates of transfer, that for most students plans to transfer develop after they enter college and are not a major factor in their initial “choice,” that the rate of transfer is highly dependent on the corresponding arrays of programs at colleges and universities, and that articulation might better be thought of as a subset of other basic forms of inter-institutional cooperation. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the ASHE Annual Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, November, 2007.     

Sample, Random and Variation: The Vocabulary of Statistical Literacy

This paper considers the development of school students’ ability to define three terms that are fundamental to statistical literacy: sample, random, and variation. A total of 738 students in grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 were asked in a survey to define and give an example for the word “sample.” Of these, 379 students in grades 7 and 9 were also asked about the words “random” and “variation.” Responses were used to describe developmental levels overall and to document differences across grades on the understanding of these terms. Changes in performance were also monitored after lessons on chance and data, emphasizing variation for 335 students. After 2 years, 132 of these students and a further 209 students who were surveyed originally but did not take part in specialized lessons, were surveyed again. The difference after 2 years between the performance of students who experienced the specialized lessons and those who did not was considered, revealing no differences in performance longitudinally. For students in grades 7 and 9, the association of performance on the three terms was explored. Implications for mathematics and literacy educators are discussed.     

Globalisation, identity, and nation: Australian and American undergraduates abroad

In this essay, I explore how two groups of undergraduates — Americans and Australians — participate in the reformulation of the “global imagination” through their experiences of studying abroad. Specifically, I question the assumption that the global imagination constitutes one shared, common experience that is the same across nations. In contrast, I demonstrate that though American and Australian students are certainly among the elite in global terms, their shared economic position does not necessarily correspond to a common global imagination. Instead, they have markedly different notions of both national and global identities. American students’ strong national identity often prevents them from exploring the possibilities of global affiliation. Australian students’ relatively weak national identity allows for a robust global sense of place, but is sometimes constrained by a limited tolerance for racial and ethnic diversity. In conclusion, I argue that the global imagination has not one, but numerous manifestations, which have the potential to both enable and constrain the enhancement of justice and democracy in a global context.     

Student Flow Between Community Colleges: Investigating Lateral Transfer

The traditional unidirectional (“linear”) postsecondary path from high school to a community college to a 4-year institution into the workforce represents accurately a decreasing proportion of the pathways actually taken by students through higher education. Instead, students increasingly exhibit patterns of enrollment that take them through multiple postsecondary institutions, both within levels of the higher education system (e.g., multiple community colleges, multiple 4-year institutions) and across levels (e.g., movement back and forth between community colleges and 4-year institutions). These “swirling” patterns of enrollment are widely recognized by scholars of higher education, but they remain poorly understood. In this study, I employ data that address 89,057 first-time students in the California community college system to answer a number of key questions concerning lateral transfer between community colleges, which, according to prior research, constitutes one sizeable component of student “swirl”. Building on the very limited work on this topic, I examine whether the reported high prevalence of lateral transfer holds true under a more stringent operational framework than that employed in prior work. I explore whether lateral transfer is primarily an artifact of students enrolling simultaneously in multiple community colleges, sometimes called “double-dipping”. I investigate the timing of lateral transfer from several different perspectives to determine how lateral transfer fits in students’ progress and development. Finally, I probe the relationship between students’ level of academic investment in their current community college and the risk of lateral transfer.     

How the Discovery Channel Television Show Mythbusters Accurately Depicts Science and Engineering Culture

High school science teachers, of course, want to motivate their students to consider studying science and engineering (S&E) in college. However, many high school students are not familiar with what science and engineering actually entail. They may know science as little more than “systematic discovery” and engineering as nothing but “math-intensive design.” Without appreciation for the rich culture of science and engineering, students will be unlikely to choose such a field of study. The Discovery Channel television show Mythbusters helps remedy the lack of understanding many people, especially young people, have about S&E. Mythbusters presents a highly accurate vignette of the culture of science and engineering. Episodes of the show were analyzed for instances in which the culture of science and engineering was accurately depicted. Many resources, including several publications of the National Research Council, informed the media analysis. To encourage more high school students to pursue S&E in college, they need to be exposed to the culture of S&E. Mythbusters provides a window into the often unseen realm of science and engineering, allowing its viewers, who are disproportionately represented among the young adult age bracket, to see what it means to conduct science and engineering on a routine basis. High school science instructors should look to Mythbusters to provide insight into the culture of S&E that textbooks often have difficulty conveying to students.