Blog #8
1.Challenges Facing Immigrant Students Beyond the Linguistic Domain in a New Gateway State
Research question: What do teachers perceive as the non-linguistic challenges facing immigrant students in a new gateway state?
Method: Online survey was sent to middle and high school social studies teachers in North Carolina
Result: Participants identified four challenges beyond the linguistic domain: a limiting formal curriculum, the legal status of immigrants leading to acculturation and academic difficulties, the new gateway state factor, and the negative impacts of an anti-immigration climate. Participants noted the lack of representation of immigrant history and heritages in the curriculum, while several participants recognized that immigrant groups’ contributions to the United States had been marginalized. Participants expressed that many undocumented students saw limited opportunities for attending higher education. As a result, many of these already vulnerable students took an apathetic view toward academic achievement. This study also noted challenges with rising immigrant students in places where few immigrants settled before. Participants’ concerns about the tenor of the public discourse around immigration were warranted. First of all, teachers had a very positive perception of teaching immigrant students. Even while acknowledging the multiple challenges and difficulties, the implicit message conveyed by participants was enjoyment in teaching immigrant students and a desire to help immigrant students. Second, participants adhered to three of the five additive acculturation tenets—drawing on immigrant students’ knowledge and experiences, having empathy and care for immigrant students, and making content relevant to immigrant students.
Summary: This study provides information about high school immigrant students’ challenges. It is very eye-opening to read about this research. The curriculum problem makes much sense since it was built for most students. I haven’t thought about how immigration status and the anti-immigrant wave affect students’ achievements either. Geographic locations are also objective factors that affect immigrant students. I will consider these problems in my research so my research can cover most issues immigrants are facing.
(Hilburn, 2014)
2. Immigrant and international college students’ learning gaps: Improving academic and sociocultural readiness for career and graduate/professional education
Research questions:
- How well do immigrant and international college students perform, relative to the U.S.-born natives, in terms of their bachelor’s degree attainment and transition into a career or graduate/professional education?
- How do immigrant and international students’ undergraduate education experiences, including academic and sociocultural engagement in high-impact practices, affect the chances of their college success?
- What are the key challenges, opportunities, and strategies for immigrant and international students to improve college success?
Method: Quantitative methods used the Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) data (N=8,642), and the Qualitative approach conducted one-on-one interviews of undergraduate and graduate students (N=18)
Result: High-impact practices such as academic and sociocultural engagement, study abroad programs, foreign language courses, co-op internship programs, student teaching, and advanced college-level math courses positively affected college success.
Quantitative findings suggested that immigrant students are more disadvantaged than the US-born group. They are primarily racial minorities (Hispanic and Asian) and have relatively lower parental education and SAT/ACT scores. 52% of immigrant students obtained a bachelor’s degree in six-year time, and 29% landed a job offer. Immigrant students reported a much lower rate of academic and socio-cultural engagement. Beyond the influences of student family background, bachelor’s degree attainment predictors can be influenced by educational and socio-cultural engagement and high-impact practices. The study found that engagement in four high-impact practices would help students reach a 70% chance of college success.
Qualitative research results support quantitative findings. Ecological sources, such as familial and societal pressure, financial burden, faculty relationships, and nationality, influence college success among immigrant students. Sociocultural privileges affected their learning opportunities as well as challenges. Discrimination, isolation and unprepared career goals further marginalize these students. However, they found the help and support they needed by working on accumulating to the U.S culture.
The bachelor’s degree attainment gap remains statistically significant compared to other student groups. Fast-growing immigrant ad international student groups present new challenges for American colleges to become globally inclusive higher education institutions that should connect and integrate diversity into their educational and civic missions of higher education.
Summary: This study focuses on immigrant students and shows factual findings about the challenges these students face. It again affirms other studies about this group of students. This is a critical source for my research.
(Lee et al., 2021)
3. Educating for Inclusion: Community Building Through Mentorship and Citizenship
Research question: In a democratic society, is the majority at the expense or marginalization of minority groups? Is the educational system, at all levels, ready to embrace a multicultural, multi-linguistic population and move beyond an awareness of the issues to actualization by adopting curriculum and programming which may lift hegemonic constraints to embrace inclusive student learning outcomes?
Method: literature review
Result: Mentoring has its root in the community and mutual self-help. While mentoring has been generally perceived as a method for providing support to one individual by another in terms of a personal relationship developed over time, it has also recently been identified as a mechanism that can potentially support marginalized individuals within organizations. Mentorship programs provide a voice for minority students by establishing a communication mechanism whereby the institution is informed and able to respond at a structural level to individual needs. Recognizing cultural power differentials in the educational system may lead to the development of pedagogical solutions which support inclusion and combat oppression and marginalization of those individuals and groups outside the dominant cultural group.
Summary: This research confirms the benefit of mentoring in building community, leading to inclusiveness, and promoting education goals among immigrant students. Mentorship is not only about academic guidance but also about supporting individuals in developing personal relationships and social connections and decreasing marginalization. This is an excellent point to add to my research.
(ROLAND, 2008)
4. Exploring Ethics Identity Through Social Networking Sites: A Q Methodology Study With Immigrant-Origin College Students
Research questions:
- How do immigration-origin (IO) college students engage in ethnic identity exploration via social networking sites (SNS)?
- What patterns of identity exploration emerge via SNS use?
- What characteristics of these students explain differences in ethnic identity exploration via SNS?
Method: a focus group interview is used to assist in constructing the Q-set (a concourse of statements representing descriptions of the phenomenon, i.e., SNS behaviors); and sorting and ranking the Q-set.
Result: This study supports prior research establishing the use of SNS to facilitate ethnic identity self-presentation through posting ethnic and cultural content and communicating in the heritage language. Participants drew from their linguistic and familial capital not only by communicating in their heritage language but also choosing to stay in touch with their social and peer contacts providing conduits to navigational and resistant capital. Using SNS to post ethnic-identity content, speak in a heritage language, and connect with ethnic-affiliated campus clubs may help facilitate ethnic identity maintenance. It supports the application of this identity model to ethnic identity research. Heritage language retention and relationships with same-ethnicity peers are essential to ethnic identity development. The findings offer insights into how to customize social media for programming and strategic outreach to IO students.
Summary: While working on this research, I had the idea of developing a social networking platform where mentors and mentees can connect and share their experiences and resources. That is why I investigate how social networking sites affect immigrant students. This study shows that social media can be used to express cultural identity and connect with their peers.
(Purgason et al., 2020)
5. Acculturation and Well-being Among College Students from Immigrant Family
Research question:
- To what extent are heritage and American acculturation-related variables associated with well-being?
- Are the associations between acculturation and well-being consistent across the domains of acculturation— practices, values, and identifications?
- Are these associations consistent across gender, ethnicity, and immigrant generation?
- Are the present findings equivalent between college towns and urban/suburban or commuter settings?
Method: Participants were 2,774 first-generation and second-generation immigrant students (70% women) from 6 ethnic groups and 30 colleges and universities around the United States. Participants completed measures of heritage and American cultural practices, values, identifications, and subjective, psychological, and eudaimonia well-being.
Result: Findings indicated that individualistic values were positively related to psychological and eudaimonia well-being and positively, although somewhat less strongly, linked with subjective well-being. American and heritage identifications were both modestly related to psychological and eudaimonia well-being. These findings were consistent across gender, immigrant generation (first versus second), and ethnicity. Psychological and eudaimonia well-being appear to be inherently individualistic conceptions of happiness, and endorsing individualistic values appears linked with these forms of well-being. Attachments to a cultural group—the United States, one’s country of origin, or both—appear to promote psychological and eudaimonia well-being. The findings suggest that similar strategies can be used to promote well-being for both male and female students, students from various ethnic backgrounds, and first-generation and second-generation immigrant students.
Summary: Why researching for this project, I found some interesting research about immigrant students’ psychology, and I think these studies can help establish the relationship between culture and education.
(Schwartz et al., 2013)
Reference:
Hilburn, J. (2014). Challenges Facing Immigrant Students Beyond the Linguistic Domain in a New Gateway State. The Urban Review, 46(4), 654–680. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-014-0273-x
Lee, J., Kim, N., & Su, M. (2021). Immigrant and international college students’ learning gaps: Improving academic and sociocultural readiness for career and graduate/professional education. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 2, 100047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2021.100047
Purgason, L. L., Villalba, J. A., & Fosback, C. (2020). Exploring Ethnic Identity Through Social Networking Sites: A Q Methodology Study With Immigrant-Origin College Students. Journal of College Student Development, 61(2), 207–224. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2020.0018
ROLAND, K. A. (2008). Educating for Inclusion: Community Building Through Mentorship and Citizenship. The Journal of Educational Thought (JET) / Revue de La Pensée Éducative, 42(1), 53–67.
Schwartz, S. J., Waterman, A. S., Umaña‐Taylor, A. J., Lee, R. M., Kim, S. Y., Vazsonyi, A. T., Huynh, Q., Whitbourne, S. K., Park, I. J. K., Hudson, M., Zamboanga, B. L., Bersamin, M. M., & Williams, M. K. (2013). Acculturation and Well-Being Among College Students From Immigrant Families. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(4), 298–318. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.21847
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