30.021 - Immigration and Multicultural Urban Educational Policies and Their Implementation in India, Korea, Japan, and Singapore

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Globalization and increasing immigration have brought new opportunities and tensions to
education in rapidly industrialized Asian countries. This symposium features five papers focused on identifying challenges with ensuring equitable access to quality education for immigrants in India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. These papers examined policies characterized by a multiplicity of definitions, theories, and practices. As a result, these papers revealed uneven multicultural policy development and implementation across nations and suggested steps for reforms. A discussion of these papers may also suggest a new paradigm for multicultural education and provide an applicable analytical lens for cross-national comparison through various historical periods, which is necessary because Asian countries have different historical colonial and postcolonial legacies and different patterns of recent immigration.

Sub Unit

• International Relations Committee

Chair

• Xue Lan Rong, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Papers

• Globalization, Decolonization, and Education in India: Engaging Identities and Cultures in Urban Contexts - Nina Asher, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Educational Responses to Address Diversity and Social Inequality in Japan: Programs for Immigrant Students - Kaori Okano, La Trobe University

• Diversities and Multicultural Education: History and Policies in Korea - Insil Chang, Gyeongin National University of Education, Seoul, Korea; Harim Ahn, University of Maryland

• Educating All Children in Multicultural, Multilingual, Urban Singapore: The Quest for Equity Amid Diversity - A. Lin Goodwin, The University of Hong Kong; Ee-Ling Low, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Rethinking Diversity in South Korea: Examining the Ideological Underpinnings of Multicultural Education Policies and Programs - Ji-Yeon O. Jo, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; Minseung Jung, Korean National Open University

Discussant

• George W. Noblit, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill