Minnesota is known for its large concentrations of Hmong, Somali and Karen refugee-background students (RBSs). Drawing on an equity/heritage framework that centres educational equity and the sustaining of the cultural and linguistic practices of minoritized communities, this study examined how district/school websites with the highest enrolment of…

Since 1975, over 3 million refugees have entered the United States, yet schools are unequipped to recognize and comprehend refugee communities' life circumstances as shaped by structural and symbolic violence. The educational experiences of second-generation Hmong American refugees highlight this neglect and its potential consequences for…

The Hmong people are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia. Hmong Americans came to this country as refugees from Laos. Serving as the fabric of the Hmong community, the "1.5 generation" is the unique generation of those born in Laos or Thai refugee camps and transported to America in their childhood. They represent the link between their…

Ethnographic methodology across place and time is used to describe the perspectives of one young refugee boy and his father within the son's school experience. The research illuminates the cultural histories of refugee experience through the Pa'Ndau. The social position of visual texts within Hmong quilts in the son's elementary school and…

Although scholars have studied migrant children who translate for their families, less is known about how these experiences matter for life-long literacy experiences. This article argues that child language brokers develop advanced skills in literacy and rhetoric from which they draw throughout their lives, in multiple contexts.

Hmong Americans are originally a preliterate, seminomadic, and agrarian ethnic hill tribe from Southeast Asia and have now been in the United States for the last four decades. From the 1960s to the mid 1970s, the Hmong joined forces with the U.S. during the Secret War in Laos. After the U.S. pulled out of Laos in 1975, the new Laotian regime began…

This study draws on racial formation theory and theories of racialized masculinities to situate how two early-career male teachers of color from refugee backgrounds (Hmong and Somali) have made sense of conflicting gendered and racialized expectations in predominantly white and feminized professional spaces. Issues of intersectionality, power, and…

Through counter-storytelling which is a method of telling the stories of people whose stories are not often told, this qualitative study sought to examine ways in which Hmong youth and their families experience and interpret the use of English in their lives and the ways it affects their use and maintenance of the Hmong language. It also sought to…

In this article, I engage critical discourse analysis of in-depth, semistructured interviews with 4 Hmong community leaders to illumine their perspectives on the role of subtractive schooling in the struggles of Hmong students, parents, and the ethnic community as a whole. I reveal their understanding of the exclusionary practices of school that…

Based on analyses of 1,622 Hmong adolescents in a large urban school district, we illuminate a positive association between school different-race exposure and Hmong limited English proficient students' reading achievement. However, we also note a negative association of neighborhood different-race exposure with Hmong students from low…

This case study explores how multiple leaders of an elementary school, which unexpectedly received 25 Hmong refugee students, addressed the needs of the students and families by cooperating with a community organization. FAST (Families and Schools Together), an after-school program created to increase parent involvement to help their children…

There is a need for a critical race analysis of Hmong American education that places race and racism at the center of analysis, highlights Whiteness as property and recognizes the fluid and situated racialization of Hmong American students. Majoritarian explanations of inequities in Hmong American education often describe Hmong American student…

A partnership with the Hmong American community produced "The Wildlife and Wilderness Exploration Show," a DVD that puts a modern twist on traditional Hmong storytelling. Key educational messages in the DVD were identified through interviews with Hmong natural resource professionals. The messages are delivered in entertaining segments in the DVD,…

The purpose of this survey study was to investigate the relationship between Hmong students' academic achievements and Hmong parental involvement, home environment, and acculturation adjustment as measured by the Math and English Language Arts sections of the California Standard Test in the United States from parents' perspective regarding student…

This study explores barriers and success factors of Hmong students in American colleges by interviewing five Hmong graduate students from refugee families in the US. Emerging themes revolve around academic, cultural and financial barriers. Professors, advisors, classmates, academic support programmes, family, financial aid and their own…