Learning beyond the classroom: The role of church community networks in the education of immigrant children

• In Event: Experiences of Learning

Proposal

As immigrants to the United States, my family encountered interactions in settings outside of the classroom which shaped our understanding and experiences of education and life in America. Many of these interactions were connected to the Korean church where we gathered for worship service and Sunday school, Korean language class on Saturdays, communal meals on holidays, and summer camp during school breaks. While many experiences were directly concerned with religious education or more broadly with moral and ethical development, others served to socialize my family and other members to particular ideas about life in the U.S. For instance, each Thanksgiving, church ladies prepared a typical American menu of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes, served alongside Korean staples like kimchi and rice. Without such experiences, Korean-American families like mine may have never adopted an annual holiday tradition of roasting a turkey, and the school exercise of tracing around our hands to make construction-paper turkeys might have mystified my parents. These were not superficial American cultural practices, but rather manifestations of deeper ideals about what it meant to flourish as Korean-AMERICANS. Such conceptions of what it meant to live in the United States in turn guided how we approached and navigated formal schooling.

The experiences, information, and support that my family accessed in the church and networks connected to the church – which I refer to as a church community network – helped shape our understanding of our new community and more specifically, of education. My family’s case raises questions about how immigrants navigate the unfamiliar terrain of a receiving society: To what extent do faith-based organizations and other cultural and social institutions offer exposure to American norms and networks relevant to formal education? How do individuals make sense of such information, and with what implications for experiences of formal education?

This in-depth qualitative study examines the significance of non-school settings for the educational experiences of immigrant families. I particularly focus on the efforts of Korean-American and Korean immigrant parents to navigate the formal education of children, and the role of a Korean ethnic church and key social and cultural institutions linked to the church in shaping these educational experiences.

Research suggests that settings outside of formal school environments, such as extracurricular activities, religious institutions, and others, are significant for the educational experiences of diverse populations of children (e.g., Bruner et al., 2017; Furrow et al., 2004; Scales et al., 2006). For many immigrants, ethnic religious organizations may be particularly significant, as places that not only provide spiritual guidance, but also serve as key social and community centers (Bankston & Zhou, 1995; Hirschman, 2004; Min, 1992; Tsang, 2015). As such, they can connect members to practical resources – such as those directly related to the education and development of children – and provide access to information and messages about living, raising, and educating children in the United States.

The importance of settings outside the home and the inter-relationship between different settings for children’s well-being has been especially well developed within Bronfenbrenner’s (1994) ecological systems model, which situates a child’s development within an ecological system comprised of nested contexts. This model has been refined further to take into account the salience of the unique developmental processes experienced by minoritized children, such as social position, racism, migration experiences, and cultural beliefs and traditions (García Coll et al., 1996; Vélez-Agosto et al., 2017). Drawing on this work, the conceptual framework of the current study is grounded in a social-cultural-ecological approach, encompassing the direct ecological processes most proximal to children’s development (e.g., face-to-face interactions between individual and home, school, and non-school settings), and the indirect influence of more distant processes (e.g., conditions and experiences of migration).

In this study, I ask the following:
• How do Korean-American and Korean immigrant parents access and understand formal schooling in the United States?
• How do religious organizations and other key non-school settings – such as a church community network – shape families’ access to and understanding of formal education through:
o Provision of resources, such as information, material support, and networks?
o Communication of cultural messages about norms, ideas, practices, and values?

To answer these questions, I draw on qualitative data from in-depth interviews conducted with Korean-American and Korean immigrant parents to explore how they navigate and understand the education of their children, and how non-school settings shape these processes. I interview two generations of parents from families who are members of a Korean church community network, including:
• older first-generation parents;
• their now adult children, often referred to as 1.5-to-second generation, who themselves are parents of school-aged children; and
• younger first-generation parents of school-aged children.
Conducting interviews with parents of two generations of the same families enables me to situate the families’ experiences of immigration and the education of children within a larger, overall context of their transition to the United States, as well as allows for deeper and more nuanced analysis of the two generations’ respective approaches to childrearing, educating children, and participating in the church community network.

While the current study is ongoing, preliminary findings suggest that Korean-American and Korean immigrant parents strategically develop networks comprising faith-based communities and other key contacts, institutions, and networks connected to their church, both to obtain information relevant to their understanding of children’s formal schooling and to leverage resources to directly support their children’s educational experiences. Moreover, parents respond to disruptions such as those due to the Covid-19 pandemic, including by building upon existing relationships and by cultivating new pathways of support.

By providing insight into the role of a church community network in shaping educational experiences of immigrant families, this study expands notions about ways that “micro, meso, and/or macro educational strategies, structures, and processes” may be salient to the education of children (CFP, p. 1). This study further illuminates how educational stakeholders may “be better prepared to adapt to and to combat disruptions” in conditions of change, crisis, and instability (p. 2). In doing so, this study reflects the CIES 2023 Annual Conference theme: Improving Education for a More Equitable World.

Author

• Jieun Sung, University of Virginia