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Promising Schooling Practices for the Children of Immigrants

Senior Researchers: Carola Suárez-Orozco (New York University) and Mikael Alexandersson (Göteborg University)

Reseach Fellows: Lory Dance (University of Maryland), Margary Martin (New York University) and Johannes Lunneblad (Göteborg University)

Rationale

This collaboration will closely examine four innovative promising practice schools responding to the educational needs of diverse immigrant origin youth. While it is not a challenge to critique the myriad of ways immigrant adolescents’ educational needs are not being met, it is decidedly more difficult to identify promising practices that serve them well (Lucas, 1997; Morse, 2005; Walqui, 2000). Systematically examining the essential elements of such programs is an important step toward making sound policy recommendations. This research seeks to shed light on the challenges, opportunities, and solutions that teachers, students and administrators face as they attempt to meet the educational demands of preparing immigrant origin youth for this global era.

While the challenges facing post-industrial democracies are particularly reflected in schools (Goodman & Carey, 2004; Torres, 1998), education systems, by and large, have been notoriously slow to adapt to the demands to prepare students for a new era. Schools continue largely to be rooted in traditional curricula, teaching methods, and organizational arrangements developed for another economic era (Gardner, 2004; Giroux, 1996). Furthermore, most schools designed to meet the needs newcomer students have been developed for elementary school students, though more than half of newcomer students arrive to the U.S. at the high school level, contributing to extraordinarily high drop-out rates for immigrant-origin adolescents (Ruiz-de-Velasco & Fix, 2000). At a time in which education is powerfully linked to the wellbeing of individuals and nations, (Suárez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004), disengagement from learning is a major problem plaguing our schools (National Research Council, 2004). Indeed, large percentages of students (particularly those of racial, ethnic minority, and immigrant backgrounds) schooled in traditional systems are disengaging and failing to gain the skills necessary to thrive in the new economy (Crul & Vermeulen, 2003; PISA, 2002).

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In the New York metropolitan area more than 50 percent of students have immigrant parents. In this context, the vast majority of these students are poorly served; many are attending schools that suffer from the “savage inequalities” (Kozol, 1991) between the schools that serve more privileged students and those who serve students who largely come from poor, minority backgrounds. While Brown v Board of Education also legislated equal access, comparable investments have not been made. Swedish schools are an interesting comparison point because of their commitment to provide equal access. The Swedish Education Act of the 1940’s legislated that: “All children and youths shall have equal access to education…” As a result Swedes heavily invest in their schools and in their most challenged students. At the same time Sweden is relatively new to migration with a major influx of low educated, Muslim families creating a considerable degree of backlash and social unrest. Both the United States and Sweden share a contentious political climate of debate over immigration. They also share a similar pattern of low achievement outcomes for poor, disparaged minority students. There is a comparable problem in both contexts of gender inequality—girls consistently outperform boys. Further, in both contexts, students of ethnic backgrounds are likely to be taught by teachers of mainstream backgrounds.

We are interested in identifying characteristics of promising practices in 2 sites in both countries in order to develop 4 case studies. We use several criteria to select the ‘promising’ schools: The schools must serve a high proportion of immigrant origin youth (75 percent or more). They are not selective schools but rather largely neighborhood schools. They have a reputation within the educational community for being innovative. They have better than average outcomes in standard performance indicators in comparison with other schools with high proportions of “low status” immigrant kids using such criteria as grades; retention rates of students; highly qualified teachers; recruitment and retention of teachers. We purposefully will not use standardized testing as a criterion as we have found that such tests underestimate the skills of second-language learners. These schools have an institutional commitment to prepare students for our new global era by confronting core educational challenges. They provide engaging and relevant learning environments which foster personally meaningful relationships and constructive habits of work shown to contribute significantly to academic performance. These schools strive to prepare youth to successfully navigate in a multicultural world.

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Guiding Research Questions 

      ▶What school based practices foster and enhance the academic performance of immigrant origin youth? How are “promising practices” defined in each country context?

      ▶ How do innovative settings foster a positive school ethos for students from highly diverse backgrounds? How do they nurture constructive interactions with individuals from different backgrounds; an understanding of one’s own culture; the capacity to handle complex, hybrid identities, and tolerance for other cultures and ideas? How is ‘success’ defined? How does the school strive to foster a sense of belongingness to the new society for immigrant origin youth (as opposed to feeling “Otherized?)” 

      ▶Do these innovative settings lead to better academic outcomes for poor immigrant origin youth? 

      ▶Do these innovative settings lead to high levels of behavioral, cognitive, and relational engagement?

What are “Promising Practices?”

We intend to gather data on a variety of indicators of good practice with an eye both to what has been identified to lead to good outcomes for all students as well as to what is particularly necessary for immigrant-origin students.

Critical School Characteristics Conducive to Better Outcomes for All Students: A critical variable identified repeatedly in the literature is that of a positive school ethos (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1985). Is the school climate respectful, inclusive, and positive? What is the nature of relationships and interactions between teachers and students and between students of different origins? Do tolerance and a value on multicultural perspectives and experiences prevail? What is the articulated ‘grand narrative’ of the school (Postman,1996)? How is it implemented? How do students and adults in the schools recount the story of what their school is and what it is to be a participant in their school?

Does the school have an infrastructure that is conducive to supporting communication between the constituents? Such features include the architecture (e.g., natural meeting places for the students); learning environments (e.g., small classroom size, seating arrangements…); opportunities for team teaching and joint planning time; and shared decision making.

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Other features that have been identified as being important in school reform efforts include:      ▶Is the curriculum, engaging, rigorous, culturally relevant; and well implemented? 

        ▶Is information about college pathway knowledge transparent, clearly articulated, and accessible to all students, parent, & families?  

        ▶Is the school imbedded and connected to the local community? Is the school a hub of the community or simply a separate instructional entity? Are parents made welcome? Are they viewed as part of the solution and not simply as part of the problem? Are community mentors linked to the school in meaningful ways?  

        ▶Does the school have high expectations for all its students? Does it avoid formal or informal tracking?   

        ▶Is it a small school as such settings have been shown necessary of not sufficient (Conchas, 2005) for optimal student outcomes?  

        ▶Is the use of technology optimized in order to prepare students for the ‘new economy;’ to bolster engagement; and to foster communication across borders?

School Factors Particularly Conducive to Better Outcomes for Immigrant Origin Students: A critical feature to support immigrant-origin student performance is an infrastructure of academic scaffolding while students are acquiring the academic language of their new homeland. As it takes on average from 5 to 7 years to attain native-like academic language proficiency (Cummins, 1991) is tutoring, after-school homework help, test accommodations, and continued instruction in the mother-tongue made available?

Immigrant-origin families undergo turmoil during the process of migration that often results in at least transient challenges to emotional wellbeing. Schools that respond optimally to their students of immigrant origins recognize this ‘transplant shock’ and provide supports its students and their families.

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Immigrant parents are often less able to provide the kinds of supports that teachers expect from parents. They cannot help with homework as they often have limited education and do not speak the language in the new homeland. They also often work long hours and on shifts in which they have limited flexibility; as a result they are less able to attend parent-teacher conferences. Schools that work with large immigrant-origin populations must redefine what are the expectations of parental involvement.

Other characteristics that have been identified as important for schools that serve immigrant students well include:  

        ▶Does the school offer family literacy supports and second language instruction to parents?  

        ▶Does the school adjust its time frame for graduation in recognition of the extra time it takes immigrant students to master a new language while accruing graduation requirements?       ▶Do the faculty advocate for their students? In the spirit of grounded research, we will also be alert to unanticipated practices that emerge from the field.

Design

To assess the school ethos, teacher/student, teacher/teacher, and student/student relationships, school climate and intercultural understanding, we will conduct ethnographic fieldwork as the primary data collection strategy. How the communication around ethos is structured is likely to vary within each of the four schools under consideration. Every case will include focus informants from three mixed cultural groups based on variation on: 1) demographic proportion in the school; 2) social status at each school; and 3) success in terms of grades and performance. Each group will consist of 3 to 5 focus students; making up a total of nine to fifteen students at each school. In total, 36 to 60 focus students will take part in the project as a whole. The identified students will be studied in four different contexts (a-classrooms during lessons, b-in group works in different subjects, c-in discussion groups where general issues are in focus, and d-in groups working together) for a period of five to seven weeks at each school (i.e., 3 to 4 months of data collection at each school). We will also interview teachers at the schools and parents of the focus students to understand how they conceptualize the Ethos and the Grand Narrative of the schools.

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Field notes of observations in a variety of contexts: classes, faculty meetings, school hallways, cafeteria and other informal spaces, and parent/teacher meetings will be collected. These notes will be transcribed, typed, and coded using AtlasTI. Building upon previous research with immigrant- and refugee-origin youth (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Doucet, 2003; Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova, in press), we will administer school-wide structured interviews to assess dimensions of student relational, behavioral, and cognitive engagement. This data will be compared with data from the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation study, which demonstrated the relationships between these three dimensions of engagement and academic outcomes as well as differential pathways of student performance in a sample of immigrant students as well as in a sample of students born in the U.S. The performance of the schools will be linked to broad quantitative indicators (e.g., grades, student attendance rates, retention rates, teacher recruitment and retention records) that will be gathered from school records and city education statistics. Lastly, we will conduct structured focus group interviews with a variety of stakeholders (e.g., students, teachers, faculty, parents) to contextualize emerging findings.

Implementation

Data about each of these designated school variables will be collected across the four sites by our team of three fellows. Responsibility for a number of variables will be assigned to particular fellows who will gather this data for each site. Thus, for example, one fellow will assume responsibility for collecting data on the curriculum and the official comparison records; while another will gather data on the communication infrastructure and the community relations. Data will be made available to the entire team on a project closed access website.

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The fellows intend to focus the bulk of their research time on the school ethos focusing on student interactions and communication between teachers and students a variety of contexts. Each of the fellows will take ethnographic notes from three vantage points: the perceptions of teachers; the perceptions of students; and the daily interactions between teachers and students in classrooms. While the fellows will all collect data from these three vantage points from our different sites, each fellow will focus their analyses on the vantage point as follows: Johannes Lunneblad will focus on the perceptions of teachers; Lory Dance will focus on the perceptions of students; and Margary Martin will focus on the daily interactions between teachers and students in classrooms.

To manage the challenging task of collecting data from four schools in two countries over a relatively short period of time, each researcher will collect extensive data at one or two school sites, with researcher overlap to allow for a smooth transition between researchers and to enhance the collective understandings of each site. Jonannes Lunneblad will be at the New York sites from mid-way from November through April; Lory Dance work at the Swedish sites from fall through early Spring; and Margary Martin will conduct her field work in New York during the fall semester and in Sweden during the spring semester.

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