Session Information
Contribution
Description: The study presented in the paper is a qualitative study of ten immigrant families in Iceland. It deals with the home - school interaction during the first three years of schooling (at different levels in pre- and primary schools) among immigrant children and their families. It also deals with the synchronizing or negotiating of lifestyles, cultural and religious processes, the negotiation of identities in a new social and cultural environment. It focuses on the process of learning to be a parent in a new society, learning to be a parent of a school child and learning to be a pupil. The purpose of this study is twofold. My main aim is to study the process of adjustment (reciprocal or unilateral) of immigrant families to society and their school community by interviewing the parents and children. Important issues are the societal conditions and structures that the families encounter in a new country and how they address these conditions, to what extent they adjust or recreate their social environment and to what extent they remake their identities. Other important issues are how the parents take on their double role of parents in a new society, as well as parents of a school child. Another aim is to study the possible effects of the families´ ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds on the schooling of their children and how home and school interaction, as well as more general social conditions affects the children´s attainment in their first school years and their chances of progressing socially and cognitively. The main value of the study is to improve the overall understanding of the process of adjustment of immigrant families to a new society
(Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, 2001), and hence implications for school development. The study is based on social constructionism in that it emphasizes understanding people´s description of how they interpret and construct their reality. The perspective is based on the assumption that reality is socially constructed (Berger and Luckmann, 1967). The study is also based on the theoretical approaches of critical theory, particularly on critical multiculturalism, which, according to May (1999), in a broad sense, incorporates postmodern conceptions and analyses of culture and identity, while holding onto the possibility of an emancipatory politics.
Methodology: This study is a qualitative study of ten immigrant families in Iceland. Methods used are semi-structured interviews taken with parents and children, and the teachers of the children, on average twice a year for three years. Sampling was purposeful in that I looked for immigrant children in schools in Reykjavik, that had started pre- or primary schools in 2002.
Conclusions: The most important implications of this study will be to suggest and develop ways to empower immigrants and ethnic minority groups in Icelandic society, children in schools and parents in communities and society (Ragnarsdóttir, 2003; 2004). Also, to suggest more culturally responsive models of teaching (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1994) in order to demarginalize immigrant children and include them more effectively in the schools. Such developments in schools in Iceland require new agendas and outlooks on the different levels of society, from schools to communities and society as a whole.
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