| The study investigated the experiences of immigrant families of Kenyan background in the U.S. In my statement of problem, I stated that while the number of contemporary African immigrants has continued to grow in the U.S., little in terms of research has been done to show what their experiences in their new society is. This has meant that there is little knowledge about their lives, and little to draw from in terms of research. At the same time, researchers and scholars in education have increasingly demonstrated the strong connection between academic performances of children, and their home backgrounds, and hence the need for educators to possess such knowledge. A general question for my research was "What are the families' goals academically and culturally in the U.S.?" Two subsequent research questions were (1) What are the families doing to help the children reach their academic goals in a racialized U.S. society? and (2) What are the families doing to help their children reach their cultural goals in a racialized U.S. society?;In terms of theory, I used the sociocultural theoretical framework as an umbrella framework, under which I included the "voluntary immigrant" framework as discussed by Ogbu (1986), the "language as power" framework as per Bourdieu (1991), as well as theories surrounding the concepts "culture" Rosaldo (1989), and identity and identity construction (Hall, 1992b). All these specific frameworks were informative as I did my final data analysis.;The study was qualitative in nature, and mainly used two methods, that is, interviews and observations. A total of 16 respondents participated in the study. These included six parents and six children, all who were attending school between 5th and 11th grades. I also interviewed four teachers who were either teaching the children at the time, or had taught them earlier. My data analysis was inductive in nature, i.e. the analysis was grounded in the data. I organized the data into emerging themes which I presented in chapters 4 and 5. These two chapters were organized in a mariner that corresponded roughly to the two research questions.;My findings indicated that at the academic level, all these families had high expectations of their children, and they demonstrated a great amount of participation in their children's school work as well as in extracurricular activities. Teachers interviewed indicated that they were greatly impressed with the children's academic performance and their strong work ethics. They also found the parents to be very cooperative and supportive of their children's school work.;Culturally, most parents said that they tried to maintain a balanced culture- both Kenyan/African and American, in their homes. They did note, however, that living and raising children within the larger American culture presented its own challenges. A significant finding in this work was that race, i.e. being black, did not interfere with the academic progress of the children, in spite of growing up in a society where academic performance of Black children had traditionally suffered. The different socioeconomic and historical experiences of these two groups of people were cited as a possible explanation for this phenomenon, and Ogbu's "voluntary" versus "involuntary" immigrant framework offered some insights here.;My final chapter attempted to relate my findings to the existing literature review, and also explained how the findings interacted with the sociocultural framework. In general, the goals and experiences of my participating families appeared to resemble those of many other immigrants from other parts of the world living in the U.S. Theoretically, the findings seemed to fit in quite well with the various sociocultural theories discussed. |
