Chi Nguyen

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• Choi, J., Nguyen, C., & Li, A. (2024). Navigating challenges in American higher education: Korean international Christian students’ use of spiritual capital in response to white Christian nationalism. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies. doi:10.1080/10714413.2024.2375049
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  Despite extensive scholarly debates on Christian privilege and Secular privilege in American higher education, the voices of international students have often been absent from this discourse. This article is a response to a recent call for diverse perspectives to advance current discussions on white Christian nationalism in American higher education. Borrowing Bradford Verter’s (2003) spiritual capital, we explore Korean international Christian students’ experience of white Christian nationalism and its counter-movements in a college town near a public land-grant university in the Northeast. Through life history interviews with 16 participants, our study reveals the complex, problematic, and nuanced relationship between Korean international Christian students and white Christian nationalism. On the one hand, our participants acknowledged that the dominance of whiteness in Christianity led their professors and classmates to overlook the possibility that Asians could also be Christian, resulting in feelings of isolation and marginalization in class. On the other hand, they encountered the perception of Christianity as outdated, broken, and unintellectual among American professors and colleagues, which silenced their voices. In navigating these challenges, participants drew on their spiritual capital to construct their meanings, identities, and belongings in the social, academic, and religious realms.
• Nguyen, C. (2024). Going or Not Going to College? Explaining the College Expectations Gap between Rural and Nonrural Vietnamese High School Students. Comparative Education Review, 68(1). doi:10.1086/728388
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  Using a mixed-methods approach, this study examines the college expectations of high school students in Hanoi, Vietnam. Findings from a survey of approximately 4,000 students and interviews with 76 students, teachers, and school leaders revealed that the majority of students planned to apply to college. However, rural students had significantly lower college expectations compared to their urban and suburban peers, largely due to inequities in socioeconomic backgrounds and parental expectations across residential locations, as suggested by survey data. The interviews revealed complexities in students’ perspectives toward continued learning, credentialism, and employment opportunities, as well as a sense of attachment or responsibility felt by rural students, leading to their decisions about whether or not to go to college. This study contributes to long-standing scholarly debates over factors attributing to students’ college expectations and provides nuanced explanations for rural-urban disparities in college-going decisions.
• Trinh, T. M., Le, T. T., LE, K. A., Nguyen, C., & Tran, T. N. (2024). Shaping choices: Factors influencing Vietnamese high school students' transition to higher education. Higher Education, 23.
• Nguyen, C. (2023). Nationally standardized policy and locally interpreted implementation: how Vietnamese school leaders enact education reform. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 26(3). doi:10.1080/13603124.2020.1722249
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  This study examines how Vietnamese high school leaders interpreted and implemented policy changes of the Vietnamese National High School Examination—a nationally standardized exam that determines whether students may graduate from high school and attend post-secondary education. The research found that at the national level, the policy is highly prescriptive, with expected uniformity and fidelity in implementation; however, at the same time, it is vaguely worded and inconsistent. At the local level, how school leaders interpreted the new policy varied according to their knowledge, experiences, values, and beliefs, making their implementations deviate from the original policy’s intent. Their policy interpretation and implementation were also shaped by systemic inequities in academic rankings and educational resources of schools that they led.
• Modeste, M., Nguyen, C., Nafziger, R., & Hermansen, J. (2022). Socially distributed leadership in elementary schools: teacher and staff leadership practice in Denmark and the USA. Journal of Educational Administration, 60(2). doi:10.1108/JEA-11-2020-0243
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  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of socially distributed leadership in Denmark and the USA, specifically teacher and staff leadership practices distributed in schools. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a confirmatory factor analysis and a second-order factor analysis to examine elementary USA and 0–9 Danish school educators’ responses to the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning. Findings: Findings from this analysis of leadership practice demonstrate (1) different approaches to teacher and staff leadership in Denmark and the USA; (2) the importance of a collaborative approach to developing and maintaining professional learning communities in schools in both contexts; and (3) different patterns of leadership practice that broadly reflect the local structure and approach to school leadership while responding to external policy demands. Originality/value: Drawing on the globalization scholarship, which acknowledges the connection between global policy development and local spaces of implementation, this comparative international study allowed us to examine how policy ideas are parlayed into practice through the use of a shared assessment of leadership practice. The results of this study suggest that while the work of teacher and staff leadership is important and something that educators in Denmark and the USA are engaging in to advance the overall instructional mission of their schools, the approaches taken in each context are different and reflect a local-level negotiation between contextual cultural norms and policy expectations.
• Modeste, M., Pavlakis, A., & Nguyen, C. (2022). Theory Amid Policy and Practice: A Typology of Theory Use in Educational Leadership Scholarship. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 17(1). doi:10.1177/1942775120941904
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  In the field of educational leadership, there is some work around the preferred theories of scholars, but little to no research on how the chosen theories are subsequently applied. Better understanding the purpose, role, and depth of how theory is used in educational leadership can help inform the teaching and mentorship of aspiring leaders and scholars. To examine the nature of theory use in educational leadership, we applied Dressman’s typology of theory use in literacy (2007), to 47 policy and practice-oriented articles in Educational Administration Quarterly. We found similar patterns to Dressman’s typology, but also important differences. Implications are discussed.
• Li, A., Nguyen, C., & Choi, J. (2019). "Because of the Christian fellowship, i decided to stay": How participating in a Christian community shapes the social experiences of Chinese international students. Social Sciences, 8(8). doi:10.3390/socsci8080234
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  This ethnographic study examines how participation in a Christian church community shapes Chinese international undergraduate students' social experiences in an American university. Our findings reveal that Chinese international undergraduate students identify the church and its fellowship as (1) a social support community and (2) an informal learning community, one which fills in the gap in counseling services and interpersonal activities that the university fails to offer. Recommendations are made for higher education institutions to provide stronger support for international students, regardless of their nationalities and religions.
• Nguyen, C., & Quinn, R. (2018). ‘We share similar struggles’: how a Vietnamese immigrant youth organizing program shapes participants’ critical consciousness of interracial tension. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(5). doi:10.1080/13613324.2016.1248833
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  This article examines Homeward Bound, a political education youth organizing program for Vietnamese immigrant youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy theory, the program sought to empower learners to challenge their pre-existing knowledge and experience of interracial relations. Drawing on data from observations, interviews, and document reviews, we describe the process by which the program shaped Vietnamese immigrant youth’s critical consciousness of Vietnamese/Asian-black interracial tension. While some participants expressed apprehension and prejudice toward African Americans, particularly in the early days of the program, by the end, participants demonstrated knowledge retained from lessons and activities on the shared history of Vietnamese immigrants and African Americans. Participants also identified roots of and offered solutions to interracial tension. This study illuminates the role of immigrant youth organizing programs in resolving interracial tension in multiracial contexts.
• Nguyen, C., & Kebede, M. (2017). Immigrant Students in the Trump Era: What We Know and Do Not Know. Educational Policy, 31(6). doi:10.1177/0895904817723740
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  The 2016 U.S. presidential election marked a time of deep political divide for the nation and resulted in an administrative transition that represented a drastic shift in values and opinions on several matters, including immigration. This article explores the implications of this political transition for immigrants’ K-16 educational experiences during President Trump’s administration. We revisit literature on school choice and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)—two policy areas where the most significant changes are expected to occur—as it pertains to immigrant students in the United States. We identify areas where there is limited scholarship, such as the unique educational experiences of various minority immigrant subgroups, the interplay between race and immigration status, and immigrant students in rural areas. Recommendations are made for policy and research.
• Quinn, R., & Nguyen, C. (2017). Immigrant Youth Organizing as Civic Preparation. American Educational Research Journal, 54(5). doi:10.3102/0002831217712946
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  Adequately preparing youth to enter the civic spheres of adulthood has emerged as an issue of concern in recent years due to widening civic empowerment gaps that track along race and class lines. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Homeward Bound (pseudonym), a program for Vietnamese youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we show how immigrant youth organizing functions as civic preparation. We identify three processes. Organizing has the potential to (a) develop the critical orientation of immigrant youth participants and prepare them to (b) navigate the unique political dynamics within their local communities and (c) work cooperatively and productively with other communities. The study demonstrates the capacity of immigrant youth organizing to help close civic empowerment gaps.

Proceedings Publications

• Sun, J., & Nguyen, C. (2023). Asian American Education Literature Before and After Covid-19. In International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography.
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  Asian Americans have been stereotyped as “model minorities” and occupy a precarious racial position in U.S. racial hierarchy. At times in U.S. history, Asian Americans are touted as success stories of U.S. meritocracy; however, Asian American valorization often depends on broader social contexts. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and its origins in China also came a wave of anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. This shift in Asian American positionality became a focal point to scholars across fields and broadly shifted the discourse on Asian American issues. This study uses Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) to build two models which thematically show differences across the literature before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first model focuses on Asian American issues, such as the perpetual foreigner and the model minority, and shows after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic; research focused much more on discrimination. The second model shows the relationship between Asian Americans and broader racial groups such as Black, Latinx, and White U.S. citizens, and found that before COVID-19, there was more discussion about the relationship between Black and Asian Americans; however, after the onset of COVID-19, there was a shift to White and Asian Americans.