Immigration processes have huge impacts on schooling: Schools receive a heterogeneous group of students who are multilingual and may even have attended schools in different countries. A regular class nowadays combines students from different (eg. linguistic, ethnic or cultural) backgrounds. This leads to many different reactions. Teachers must develop teaching styles which include students who do not speak the official school language. Cooperation with parents should be developed to include the fact that many parents will speak a different language than the teachers. There are many other necessary changes. Many theoretical discussions have been presented as to how to include this student group and their families (Gogolin, 1994; Gogolin & Krüger-Potratz, 2006; Krüger-Potratz, 2005; Steiner-Khamsi, 1992). In this paper, the phenomenon of how schools react towards this diverse student body is approached from a multicultural educational point of view . Based on international comparisons, it is known that not all countries achieve successful results in educating students from immigrant backgrounds (OECD, 2006). In this paper, schools in three countries will be analysed: Canada, Germany and Sweden. Canada is often referred to as being a traditional immigrant country (OECD, 2006). However, Sweden and Germany also have a significant immigration influx (Gogolin, 1994; Otterup, 2004; Werning, Löser & Urban, 2008). In all three countries schools have developed ways to include this diverse student group within their educational settings. How the schools in each national context react towards this increasing diversity, is the main question that this paper deals with.

In this paper, research results of a just-finished qualitative study will show how schools in Canada, Sweden and Germany deal with their increasing diverse student bodies. The methodology is based on a comparative education approach. Based on interviews with school principals and group discussions with teachers, case studies have been conducted that offer insight into the ways that teachers, schools and education policies choose to meet the diverse needs of a hetergeneous group.

This paper will discuss and analyse the reactions towards students from immigrant backgrounds in Canadian, Swedish and German schools. The aim is to present explanations why schools in these countries deal with cultural and linguistic diversity in a certain way. What are the major differences when it comes, for example, to Second Language support? How can it be explained that the family's language are included or excluded in these three different national contexts? What are the reasons for certain support in different national contexts? How is it possible to explain the different attitudes of teachers in Canada, Sweden and Germany?