The Indigenous Education Initiative includes a series of past, present, and future research projects sponsored or co-sponsored by IISE. Among the most prominent publication efforts include a forthcoming edited volume entitled Indigenous Education: Language, Culture, and Identity. The volume is edited by W. James Jacob, Sheng Yao Cheng, and Maureen K. Porter, and is scheduled for publication by Springer in 2012.

IISE's American Indian research initiative examines various diversity issues in US schools as they relate to indigenous education. Several case study examples are included from schools in Arizona, California, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming. Focusing on Native American perspectives regarding the transition years between high school and post-secondary education, the study examines trialectic topics of increasing importance in the indigenous education literature: identity, culture, and language. Each of these topics is at the center of state, national, and international policy debates and educational reform efforts. As globalization increasingly marginalizes indigenous languages, cultures, and identities, this study offers local perspectives and highlights areas of social justice where education can intervene in a predominantly negative globalization trend that too often leads to linguistic and cultural genocide.

IISE Program Coordinator Che-Wei Lee (a Taiwan Aborigine from the Paiwan Tribe) is a current doctoral student pursuing a dissertation that examines issues of access and attainment of indigenous students in US and Taiwan universities. His field work will include case study higher education institutions from Taiwan and the United States.