Stakeholder Views on the Roles, Challenges, and Future Prospects of Korean and Chinese Heritage Language-Community Language Schools in Phoenix: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This study examines stakeholders’ perspectives on Korean and Chinese heritage language and community language (HL-CL) schools and education in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Arizona. It investigates and compares the roles, major challenges, and future prospects of Korean and Chinese HL-CL schools as viewed by principals, teachers, and parents. To conduct the comparative study, surveys were administered among Korean and Chinese teachers and parents from five Korean and five Chinese HL-CL schools in the Phoenix area. In an effort to strengthen the study’s validity, we also chose two Korean and two Chinese community schools to conduct in-depth interviews with school administrators, teachers, and parents. The findings of this study show that both Korean and Chinese stakeholders viewed the HL-CL schools and their education as very important not only for maintaining children’s HL-CL, but also to help them build a positive sense of cultural and ethnic identity. The findings also demonstrate that the schools face challenges of a high teacher turnover rate, teacher shortage, and lack of parental support. Despite the challenges, both ethnic groups’ stakeholders expressed strongly optimistic views on the future prospects of their HL-CL schools. This study is significant because few previous studies extensively compared HL-CL schools in the two ethnic groups’ community schools. The study also deepens the understanding of the stakeholders’ perspectives of HL-CL schools and their education in the two communities.