Discussion March 10 to cover public education in Korea, China, Japan and the U.S.

The Secondary Education Department will be holding a discussion March 10 on public school education in Korea, China, Japan and the United States.

The event will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. in Miller Hall Room 258. Attendees are invited to bring their lunches to eat during the meeting.

Participants in the discussion will include two visiting international scholars in the Secondary Education Department this academic year (Wei Jiao from Lanzhou University in China and Hyangsuk Bu from Hanyang University in Korea) and an international scholar visiting several school districts and colleges of teacher education in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest (Hitoshi Sato from Fukuoka University in Japan).

Jiao and Bu both research teacher education, multicultural education relative to their own countries, and are currently engaged in researching these areas especially as they pertain to comparisons within the contexts of public education in the U.S.

Sato is visiting several school districts and colleges of teacher education in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest this March, and studying teacher preparation in the states.

The discussion will begin with a brief overview of public school education in their home countries by the 3 visiting scholars and then there will be extended time for further discussion across country settings.

Wei Jiao: Wei Jiao is an associate professor in the School of Education at Lanzhou University. Her research areas include the politics of curriculum, multicultural curriculum development, and multicultural curricular reform for ethnic minority students in rural China. She has 31 publications on these areas of research. Her sabbatical research is funded by the China Scholarship Council which is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. Her research during her time on the campus of Western Washington University is focused on the study of curriculum policy, curriculum research, and multicultural education in the U.S. that can help her with current work with students and families in ethnic minority areas in China. Wei Jiao arrived in Bellingham for a year-long research stay on Aug. 14 along with her daughter and husband. Her husband is a professor of environmental studies at Lanzhou University and arranged his own research scholar stay with faculty he contacted in the Huxley College of Education.

Hyang Suk Bu: Hyang Suk Bu’s research areas are multicultural citizenship, intercultural communication competence, and the creation of a multicultural education specifically designed for the Korean context. Korea has experienced rapid demographic changes in the last decade from a largely monocultural society to one that is becoming increasingly more multicultural. Up until now, educational scholars have tried to "import" multicultural theories and models created and used in the U.S. Some Korean scholars are beginning to argue the need for a multicultural model created and designed for the country of Korea. Hyang Suk serves as the Director of the Center for Multicultural Education and Research at Hanyang University and has created and facilitated several academic programs including multicultural research educational seminars, multicultural policy development associations, support programs for North Korean defectors, an international conference for multicultural scholars sponsored by the Korean Association of Multicultural Education, and cultural exchange programs for international students at her university. Hyang Suk's sabbatical research will focus on the development of a multicultural education theory that is specifically designed for the unique contexts of students and families in Korea. She is in Bellingham from Feb. 10 to Aug. 10, 2016.

Hitoshi Sato: Hitoshi Sato is an associate professor in the Department of Education and Clinical Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities at Fukuoka University in Fukuoka, Japan. He is studying teacher preparation program in the U.S. with an emphasis on how teacher preparation program collaborate with local schools and school district. As part of his research, he is examining the role of field experiences in teacher preparation programs, curriculum development of teacher education classes, and teacher hiring practices.