Transforming Institutional and Federal Policies: Findings From Partnership for Equity in Education Through Research

• In Event: 29.040 - Action Research Transforming Education Policy and Practice

Abstract

The Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community is often times misrepresented as universally successful, as seen reports similar to the Pew Research Center’s (2012) report, “The Rise of Asian Americans.” The unfortunate reality is that the AAPI students face unmet needs and are typically overlooked and underserved on college campuses (Teranishi, 2008). For example, a large concentration of AAPIs attend community colleges and one in five need remediation in English (Teranishi, 2011). Federally designated Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) represent unique sites to realize the full degree-seeking potential of low-income AAPI sub-groups, including Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Filipinos. AANAPISIs are the newest category of federally designated minority-serving institutions (MSIs).

This paper presents findings from the Partnership for Equity in Education through Research (PEER) project, which works through strategic cross-campus collaborations with three of the nation's first AANAPISIs to help advance America's national college completion goals and the democratic mission of higher education. All three campus partners are two-year institutions, which is notable as AAPI enrollment in this sector has been outpacing their enrollment in four-year colleges by a margin of 30 percentage points, and they are overwhelmingly low-income students (Teranishi, 2011). This paper will share findings from ethnographic studies of PEER campus partners, including observations taken place throughout the PEER research process.

The PEER project uses an action-based research approach for examining the educational outcomes of low-income AAPI students. This approach, as highlighted in our preliminary findings, was a critical component of the success of the three-year project. Campus administrators and staff indicated a high level of satisfaction with the collaborative research process and cited the opportunity to engage in cross-campus partnerships a critical component of their institutional and programmatic success. Moreover, participants shared that the multiple meetings bringing together all three campus partners, including approximately 18 institutional representatives across the campuses, enhanced their success as AANAPISIs and reinforced their commitment to building a network to support new and emerging AANAPISI institutions.

These findings confirm that through action-based research approach, PEER has informed institutional and in turn, federal policies through partnerships with each campus (faculty, staff, and administrators), federal policy-makers, and minority-serving institution lobbying groups. The PEER project represents a potential model for researcher-practitioner collaboration to enhance institutional capacity-building through inquiry at MSIs. This session provides a forum to discuss the role of action research and models for researcher-practitioner collaboration in higher education to achieve equitable outcomes for low-income, high-need students at both the institutional and policy levels.

Authors

• Loni Bordoloi, Teagle Foundation

• Margary Martin, University of Hawaii at Hilo