ERIC Number: EJ954489
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1550-7076
EISSN: N/A
Stakeholder Views on the Roles, Challenges, and Future Prospects of Korean and Chinese Heritage Language-Community Language Schools in Phoenix: A Comparative Study
You, Byeong-keun; Liu, Na
Heritage Language Journal, v8 n3 p67-92 Fall 2011
This study examines stakeholders' perspectives on Korean and Chinese heritage language and community language (HL-CL) schools and education in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Arizona. It investigates and compares the roles, major challenges, and future prospects of Korean and Chinese HL-CL schools as viewed by principals, teachers, and parents. To conduct the comparative study, surveys were administered among Korean and Chinese teachers and parents from five Korean and five Chinese HL-CL schools in the Phoenix area. In an effort to strengthen the study's validity, we also chose two Korean and two Chinese community schools to conduct in-depth interviews with school administrators, teachers, and parents. The findings of this study show that both Korean and Chinese stakeholders viewed the HL-CL schools and their education as very important not only for maintaining children's HL-CL, but also to help them build a positive sense of cultural and ethnic identity. The findings also demonstrate that the schools face challenges of a high teacher turnover rate, teacher shortage, and lack of parental support. Despite the challenges, both ethnic groups' stakeholders expressed strongly optimistic views on the future prospects of their HL-CL schools. This study is significant because few previous studies extensively compared HL-CL schools in the two ethnic groups' community schools. The study also deepens the understanding of the stakeholders' perspectives of HL-CL schools and their education in the two communities. (Contains 2 tables.)
Descriptors: Ethnicity, Community Schools, Metropolitan Areas, Comparative Analysis, Faculty Mobility, Teacher Attitudes, Heritage Education, Stakeholders, School Role, Barriers, Administrator Attitudes, Parent Attitudes, Interviews, School Surveys, Korean Culture, Asian Culture, Austro Asiatic Languages, Questionnaires
National Heritage Language Resource Center and UC Consortium for Language Learning & Teaching. 1333 Rolfe Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1411. Tel: 310-825-1138; Fax: 310-206-5183; e-mail: hlj@international.ucla.edu; Web site: http://www.heritagelanguages.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Arizona
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A