Chapter 6: An Ethnographic Study of Chinese American Family Involvement in Young Children’s Education

Over the last 20 years enough evidence about the critical role of the family in student achievement (Henderson & Berla, 1994) has been amassed that Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994 (National Educational Goals Panel, 1995) decided to include family-school-community partnerships as one of the eight national goals. In a multicultural society such as the United States, building these partnerships can be an enormous challenge. Certain family processes identified in research studies as important to school success seem to lose their explanatory power when applied to Asian Americans (Dornbusch & Wood, 1989; Holloway, 1990; Schneider & Lee, 1990). For example, whereas parental attendance at school functions, involving children in mealtime conversations, and having an authoritative rather than authoritarian parenting style is correlated with White and Black students’ school success, these factors seem to have little or no bearing on the performance of Asian American students. It is clear that Asian American parents support of their children’s learning takes forms that are quite different from those of parents from other ethnic and cultural groups. “Asian American,” however, is a term that embraces a large number of ethnic groups. There is a need to identify patterns of family involvement in education in each Asian ethnic group.