Imagined lives: The Korean community and policy and practice at a New Zealand high school

Abstract

The New Zealand Curriculum stipulates the inclusion of community voices in local school decision making, planning and review (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 9). Moreover, in this national document participation is a key value and a key competency for all students. Between this inclusive, participative agenda and the real life positioning of migrants in New Zealand school communities there appears to be an abyss (Bartley & Spoonley, 2008; Ward et al., 2005). This qualitative, ethnographic, participative study, informed by critical theory, explores the hopes and dreams of three groups attached to one urban high school: members of the Korean parent community; senior, successful Korean students; and the three most senior members of the school management team. In collecting data this study aimed to give voice to those on the margins. In focus group interviews the participants (the Korean parents, and the Korean students) took extended turns, spontaneously telling micro stories to each other, using the narrative form to illustrate, and give credence to, their general thoughts. Themes emerging from interviews and field data were coded and analysed using modified grounded theory. The narratives told suggested that the Korean parents arrived with visions of New Zealand as a land of opportunity where they hoped that they and their children would find their own, non-traditional future selves. Disappointingly, they found themselves and their children positioned on the periphery of the mainstream. The parents asked the school for help for their teenaged children to participate in mainstream classrooms, and in particular for stories to build motivating visions of their future selves in the host context. The interviewed successful students, except for one outlier, engaged Korean networks outside school, rather than the mainstream school resources the parents requested, to plan their futures which were decidedly traditional. International research suggests such ethnic networks, while enabling academic success, narrow career choice, and limit employment opportunities (Mak, 2010; Zhou & Kim, 2006). Data analysis shows that members of school management's reliance on the school structures including the pastoral whānau structure and its associated activities, such as school camps, to enact socially inclusive national and local policy appear to be insufficient to realise cross-culturally participative education. My hope is that this study will continue to provide encounters among the school's multiple communities. Dialogue, and increasing negotiation and networking, will assist Korean iii community members to adapt, to reinvent, and to sustain themselves individually and communally in ways that fit their particular local context in New Zealand. Hearing the stories may enable emotional connections for teachers alerting them to their role in provision of increased cross-cultural, participative opportunities for all students, in this way ensuring that the national vision of students as confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners is more than rhetoric.