ABSTRACT
The authors' project, "Ethnography of Bilingual Education in a Chinese Community," is a step in this direction. We plan, through long-term participant observation in and ethnographic interviews with members of the target school and community, to describe, analyze, and explain the introduction and implementation of the bilingual program, the perceptions of it among community members, and its potential effects in the school and community. The goal of the study is to describe as completely as possible the educational processes of a group of Chinese-American bilingual children in their bilingual program, their school, and their community. In order to test our tentative hypothesis that the bilingual program was stigmatized, we re-entered the field for more focused observation. Our researchers have found further evidence against any stigma attached to the bilingual program in the comments made to them by staff members. The Chinese-American parents' traditional respect for authority, including school authority, may make them easy targets for manipulation.
