Understanding Culturally Sustaining Practices Through the Lens of Chinese Immigrant Families in the United States

Abstract

Discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic re-exposed racist tropes about Asian Americans, with verbal and physical attacks on people of AAPI heritage. There is much to learn about the people and cultures within the AAPI designation, yet only recently has research acknowledged this. Schools can be fertile spaces for improving knowledge and dispelling myths. First, a nuanced analysis of school experiences of AAPI families is needed. Using culturally sustaining pedagogy, we developed a qualitative online survey to investigate Chinese immigrant parents’ perceptions of their U.S.-born children’s public school experiences. Parents voiced an urgent need for an enhanced understanding of AAPI cultures in schools. They expressed hope that their children would have space to sustain their culture and utilize their full linguistic repertoires in schools. We propose methods for leveraging parents’ expertise as cultural insiders, enhancing culturally sustaining practices in classrooms, and developing multilingual ecologies in U.S. public schools via translanguaging pedagogy.