Education, Ethnicity and Equity in the Multilingual Asian Context

292 Pages·2019·3.676 MB·English

by  Jan GUBE, Fang GAO

Multilingual Education
Jan GUBE
Fang GAO Editors
Education,
Ethnicity and
Equity in the
Multilingual
Asian Context
Multilingual Education
Volume 32
Series Editors
Andy Kirkpatrick
Department of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, Griffith University,
Nathan, Australia
Bob Adamson
Chair Professor of Curriculum Reform
Department of International Education and Lifelong Learning
The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
Editorial Board
Jan Blommaert, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
Kingsley Bolton, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Feng Anwei, The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China
Ofelia Garcia, The Graduate Centre, City University of New York, USA
Saran Kaur Gill, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia
Mingyue (Michelle) Gu, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Gu Yueguo, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Hartmut Haberland, Roskilde University, Denmark
David C.S. Li, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Li Wei, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
Low Ee-Ling, National Institute of Education, Singapore
Tony Liddicoat, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
Ricardo Nolasco, University of the Philippines at Diliman, Manila,
The Philippines
Merrill Swain, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto,
Canada
Virginia Yip Choy Yin, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT,
Hong Kong SAR
The book series Multilingual Education publishes top quality monographs and
edited volumes containing empirical research on multilingual language acquisition,
language contact and the respective roles of languages in contexts where the
languages are not cognate and where the scripts are often different, in order to be
able to better understand the processes and issues involved and to inform governments
and language policy makers. The volumes in this series are aimed primarily at
researchers in education, especially multilingual education and other related fields,
and those who are involved in the education of (language) teachers. Others who will
be interested include key stakeholders and policy makers in the field of language
policy and education. The editors welcome proposals and ideas for books that fit the
series. For more information on how you can submit a proposal, please contact the
publishing editor, Jolanda Voogd. E-mail: [email protected]
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8836
Jan GUBE • Fang GAO
Editors
Education, Ethnicity and
Equity in the Multilingual
Asian Context
Editors
Jan GUBE Fang GAO
The Education University of Hong Kong The Education University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China Hong Kong SAR, China
ISSN 2213-3208 ISSN 2213-3216 (electronic)
Multilingual Education
ISBN 978-981-13-3124-4 ISBN 978-981-13-3125-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3125-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018966870
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Foreword
This foreword offers the “back story” of how the volume that follows came to be.
Being an academic in education and a “gweilo” (local Hong Kong Cantonese
term meaning “white foreigner”), I was not warned of the many hurdles to research-
ing in the field of ethnic minority education. They manifested as covert negative
resistance on the part of colleagues who deliberated in committees to accept or
reject research grant applications or manifested as polite, yet resistant Education
Bureau responses from education administrators who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pro-
vide details of the policy for establishing and funding designated schools for ethnic
minority (EM) students.
With persistence and resilience, each hurdle was met and overcome. The research
team, consisting of myself, Jan Gube, and Chura Thapa, were able to proceed with
the gathering of data across a number of “designated” schools – courtesy of either a
school’s visionary principal or a school’s individual teachers of EM students. In the
main, these principals and teachers were committed to fostering more equitable
practices through their roles, even though they openly admitted that they struggled
in their efforts to accomplish this. The schools primarily served EM students. The
official label for EM students is non-Chinese-speaking students (NCS). Such a label
renders invisible the linguistic and cultural diversity of ethnic minority students,
whereas “ethnic minority” accurately captures the notion of the ethnicity diversity
of the population.
A wealth of findings emerged (more than we could disseminate); this was due in
large part to the qualitative data gathered in the language choice of respondents
facilitated by the multi-language skills of researcher Jan Gube, whose heritage is
Filipino, although “born and bred” and educated in Hong Kong and whose language
proficiency includes Tagalog, Cantonese, and Putonghua. Additionally, researcher
Chura Thapa, who is Nepalese, therefore used both the Nepalese language and lan-
guages spoken by Indian EM students in research interviews.
As our research project concluded and we began publishing the findings (see
Connelly, Gube & Thapa, 2013), we grew more cognizant of “other players” in EM
education debates, some of who warrant a mention here:
v
vi Foreword
Ms. Fermi Wong Wai-fun, a social worker who has for 16 years set up and run Hong Kong’s
foremost non-governmental organization (NGO) called Unison that advocated for the rights
of ethnic minorities particularly in schools. Ms Wong stood down from her role in Unison
in 2013.
Dr. Chan Kui Pui has worked for 13 years for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. He
transformed a secondary school into the first “designated” schools admitting more than 800
students of South Asian ethnicities. Dr. Chan’s “Great Leap Forward” (2005) in The Hong
Kong Standard of the 19th October, was a watershed moment.
Professor Kerry Kennedy along with his colleague, Professor Ming Tak Hue (2012) have
carried out numerous research projects and written articles, focused on various aspects of
educational provision for Ethnic Minority Students in Hong Kong.
From the academic field of Law, Associate Professor Kelley Loper, Director of the Centre
for Comparative and Public Law, raised the plight of inequity in relation to ethnic minori-
ties in Hong Kong’s education system and provided the report: Race and equality: A study
of ethnic minority in Hong Kong’s education system (Loper, 2004).
We contacted these and other researchers and drew together the first cluster of
like-minded academics and doctoral students across Hong Kong, at an EM in
Education Forum (Hong Kong Baptist University, HKBU). The interest in EM edu-
cation captured the attention of HKBU’s Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences –
Professor Adrian Bailey – with the support of a faculty initiative, the Global Social
Science Conferences. A grant was successfully applied for, and the not-for-profit
2-day symposium – Education, Ethnicity and Inequality: Issues and Insights – was
held at HKBU in the summer recess of 2013.
Symposium conveners – Dr. Fang Gao, Mr. Jan Gube, and I – asked presenters to
provide narratives from their contexts and also give some consideration to educa-
tional solutions to the issue of social justice, the elimination of prejudice and dis-
crimination, and the integration of ethnic minority groups into the social fabric of
society.
The symposium produced powerful commentaries from a diverse group of edu-
cational academics, teachers, doctoral students, postgraduate students, and a group
of EM secondary students – the latter co-presenting with their teacher. Following
this and with the encouragement of Hong Kong Baptist University’s Strategic
Development Fund and its Global Social Science Conferences Project, a plan was
launched to compile presenters’ papers into a volume.
Between the symposium and the realization of the said volume, 4 years have
passed. During this interval, Jan Gube gained his doctorate and has subsequently
taken up an academic appointment at The Education University of Hong Kong
(EdUHK). Dr. Fang Gao has moved from HKBU to EdUHK. And I have returned
to Australia and continued working in educational equity with a focus on teacher
education on the small Pacific Island of Nauru.
In these intervening years, the body of scholarship, having a bearing on ethnic
minority education, has greatly expanded. New voices now add to those of the sym-
posium presenters’ accounts. Dr. Gube and Dr. Gao have diligently pursued the
Foreword vii
authors of such work. Through their dedication, a richer volume (inclusive of cur-
rent discourses in the field) than was first envisaged has been brought to fruition.
I commend to you this volume of important and timely work that aims to shed
light on the educational experiences of different ethnic minority groups in Asian
multilingual contexts.
Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Education Dr. Jan Connelly
Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences
Hong Kong Baptist University
Hong Kong SAR, China
References
Chan, K. P. (2005) ‘Great Leap Forward’ Hong Kong Standard 19th October, 2005.
Connelly, J., Gube, J. & Thapa, C. (2013). Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities: An evaluation of edu-
cational support measures. In E. L. Brown and A. Krasteva (Ed), Migrants and Refugees:
Equitable Education for Displaced Populations Section III Ch.10. pp.191–214. Charlotte, NC:
Information Age Publishing.
Hue, M. T., & Kennedy, K. J. (2012). Creating culturally responsive environments: Ethnic Minority
teachers’ narratives of the cultural diversity of students in Hong Kong secondary schools. Asia
Pacific Journal of Education, Vol. 33.
Loper, K. (2004). Race and equality: A study of ethnic minority in Hong Kong’s education system.
Occasional Paper No.12. Hong Kong: Centre for Comparative Public Law, The University
of Hong Kong. Retrieved from http://www.law.hku.hk/ccpl/pub/occasionalpapers/index.html
Preface
Our aim in editing this book arose from the need to sustain and extend critical
debates concerning the education of ethnic minority students in the Asia-Pacific
region. Research has been increasingly evident not just about the cultural differ-
ences and inequities confronting Asian minorities in their host education systems
but also about how these differences/inequities are sustained and complicated at and
through different sociocultural contexts. A belief driving this book is that cultural
differences and diversity can be addressed more productively by paying attention to
how educational experiences of those underserved minority students are tied to the
issues of power and equity in and across different school communities and
societies.
To this end, this book is intended to clarify the processes associated with cultural
differences and inequities in education. It explores the topics of language, ethnicity,
and equity in Asia’s culturally diverse education contexts to reveal deep-seated
issues regarding how power is constructed, legitimized, and reproduced through
educational policy and language practices. Western, Asian, and ethnic minority
scholars in this volume bring together studies on ethnic minorities informed by dif-
ferent theoretical and methodological traditions to capture the progressive steps and
impediments toward equity and diversity in an array of cultural and language sce-
narios. They attend to ethnic minorities and immigrants within Asia and Asian
countries that move forward scholarship in the field that has traditionally focused on
minority population in Western and immigrant countries. Despite its focus upon
educational landscapes in Asia, the implications arising from the studies featured in
this volume will be able to add to discussions pertaining to policy-making and plan-
ning efforts of policy-makers, educators, researchers, and all others devoted to
improving the educational experience of ethnic minorities. The structure of the vol-
ume and its rationale are offered in the introductory chapter.
This book is a collective effort that has come to fruition with the input and sup-
port of various individuals and institutions. First, we express our heartfelt thanks to
each author for committing to the project, thus making this book a reality while
broadening our horizons as editors. We thank Hong Kong Community College, the
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, for allowing the first editor to undertake this
ix
x Preface
book project. We also thank Prof. Mark Mason, Head of the Department of
International Education and Lifelong Learning, The Education University of Hong
Kong, for his encouragement and generous financial support through the
Departmental Research Funding, which made possible the eventual compilation of
this book.
In addition, we express our gratitude to Dr. Jennifer Connelly for writing the
foreword for this book and for many insightful conversations about our experiences
working with ethnic minorities, Prof. Christine Halse for synthesizing the contribu-
tions in this book, providing recommendations for future research and policy plan-
ning, and offering financial support through the Intercultural Studies Area of
Strength. Our gratitude also goes to Prof. Andy Kirkpatrick and Prof. Bob Adamson
for including this volume in the Springer series “Multilingual Education.”
We immensely value the expertise of numerous anonymous peer reviewers who
voluntarily provided thorough, thoughtful, and critical comments to the authors that
gave the scholarship pursued in this book a much-needed vigor. Our sincere thanks
go to Dr. Amy Jia for capably managing the submissions and peer review process of
the chapters, Miss Angela Yim for her administrative support, and Miss Melissa Au
for contributing to the finalization of the book.
Hong Kong SAR, China Jan GUBE
Fang GAO