Introduction

In Chinese-heritage students in North American schools: Understanding hearts and minds beyond test scores, people explored the academic, sociocultural, psycho-emotional, and multilingual issues confronting Chinese-heritage learners across K-12 schools in the United States and Canada. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents dynamic close-ups rather than a static group profile for these diverse cohorts of learners. First of all, it is important to investigate the conditions of the millions of K-20 Chinese-heritage students in schools, homes, and communities nested in the global-local nexus, not only because of the rich experiences and perspectives to be gained from such exploration, but also because of the multitude of challenges and promises for their learning, career choices, and future lives. Chinese-heritage students are indeed a very diverse mix of learners who live and study in vastly different settings.