Schooling experience of Asian immigrant high school students in the Midwest: Race/ethnicity, identity and culture

This qualitative study centers on the voices and experiences of Asian immigrant high school students in the US educational milieu. The main aim of this study was to gain deeper knowledge of the educational experiences and needs of Asian immigrant high school students who reside in the Midwest. I conducted an in-depth case study using phenomenology as the theoretical framework to look into what it is like to be an Asian immigrant high school student in the Midwest. I obtained small samples, three foreign-born Asian high school students, a Chinese male, a Japanese female and a Filipina, and one second-generation Asian American high school student who still practices her heritage culture and language at home, at a Midwestern large urban high school. In order to collect data, I conducted my fieldwork at the Midwestern high school for four months. Direct observations and in-depth interviews were the principal components of my fieldwork. In this study, I found that the large urban high school in the Midwest that the Asian immigrant students in this study attend does not provide opportunities for them to embrace their ethnic background and to feel pride in their heritage. The Asian students are marginalized in the host school society; consequently, their ethnic values as well as their voices are generally disregarded in the Midwestern educational environ. Additionally, I found that the recent immigrant Asian students in this study frequently experienced feelings of isolation due to their unfamiliarity with the dominant school culture and the language barriers between them and their mainstream peers.