Educational Contexts of Asian American Children: An Examination of Home, Neighborhood, School, and Classroom Environments

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

From previous empirical studies that have focused on the achievement gaps between Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups, we know that the academic advantage of Asian American children persists even after considering family SES (Harris, Jamison, & Trujillo, 2008; Kao & Thompson, 2003; Pong, Hao, & Gardner, 2005). Various cultural practices also partially explain Asian Americans’ high educational outcomes (Gibbs, Shah, Downey, & Jarvis, 2017; Jung, Fuller, & Galindo, 2012). However, how the interplay between family SES and culture affect educational outcomes is not well understood. Moreover, scholars have acknowledged that the educational experience and success of Asian Americans may not fit the preexisting model of educational success and have called for further investigations into how Asian American families navigate the U.S. educational system (Cheah, 2016; Kao, 1995; Schneider & Lee, 1990).
In order to understand the mechanisms through which the SES or cultural characteristics of families relate to student outcomes, this study takes a step back and examines how the educational contexts of Asian American children systematically differ from those of other racial/ethnic groups. It parses out the extent to which the difference in Asian American children’s educational context relative to other groups is a product of socioeconomic difference versus other distinctive characteristics of Asians. To this end, this study asks the following questions: 1) How do Asian American children’s educational contexts in the home, neighborhood, school, and classroom contrast with those of other racial/ethnic groups? and 2) To what extent are the differences in educational contexts between Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups explained by variations in family SES? The differences that remain in the SES-matched comparison may be due to factors other than social class, such as cultural factors.

Preliminary Results
Overall, the educational contexts of Asian American children were consistent with what one would generally expect to see in higher social class families. On average, Asian American families lived in more affluent neighborhoods and enrolled their children in schools with lower poverty levels. The differences between Asian and non-Asian children’s educational contexts were largely explained after matching the SES of the other groups to the SES of Asian Americans. Important differences remained, such as parents’ greater agency in housing and school choice or the students’ enrollment in certain types of extracurricular programs. Young Asian American families tend to live in more affluent, but not necessarily Whiter, neighborhoods in comparison to their SES-equivalent counterparts in other racial/ethnic groups. Asian American children were not only surrounded by more Asian American peers, they also tended to have a significantly higher share of Latino/a peers in their neighborhoods and schools than other non-Latino groups.
The home environment of Asian Americans is of particular interest. Asian American parents were significantly less likely than Whites to practice the typically middle-class practices of reading books and telling stories to their children. On the contrary, Asian American children were most likely to participate in certain types of extracurricular activities, such as music, art, and non-English language lessons, in comparison to their SES-equivalent non-Asian peers.

Author

• Yoonjeon Kim, University of California - Berkeley