The present study explores how immigrant students’ ethnic and academic self-concepts intersect with school norms and practices through the 2015 PISA.  Researchers studied students from five countries to determine the extent to which students experience different sense of belonging in school, achievement motivation, experiences with teacher fairness and parental support based upon immigrant status. The contexts of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States were selected for geographical diversity and differing dominant political and social contexts regarding immigration.  Additionally, each location was chosen to have an adequate sample size. The guiding research question was, "Does student well-being differ by immigrant status in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States?" A secondary question was, "Does parents' support differ by immigrant status in France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States?"

Noted social psychologist Claude Steele (1997) asserted, “To sustain school success one must be identified with school achievement in the sense of its being a part of one’s self-definition, a personal identity to which one self-evaluatively accountable.”  This assertion has been supported in empirical literature.  Students with a high self-perception were found to be better able to perform and achieve (Marsh, Ulrich, Oliver, Olaf & Jurgen, 2005).  Intrinsic motivation has a significant positive correlation with academic self-concept and is an important determinant in school performance (Zanobini & Usai, 2002).

Suarez- Orozco and Suarez-Orozco (2001) termed self-perception as “social mirroring.”  Students create a self-concept in part as a reaction to how they are perceived and accepted by the dominant group.  Alluding to the idea of the need to maintain ones’ ethnic identity, Orellana, Faulstich, Thorne, Chee, and Lam (2001) have had to use such terms as trans- nationalism: “multi-stranded social relations that link places of origin and settlement” (Orellana et al., 2001, p. 573).  Trans-migrants are described as immigrants who migrate temporarily to enhance their families’ income; sojourners are depicted as continual and cyclical migrants, bi-nationals are described as those who shuttle between two permanent homes (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2001, p. 5). 

Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco have concluded that family and religion contribute to a “bifurcated self” making it more difficult for children to identify with their new environment.  Suarez- Orozco and Suarez-Orozco (2001) termed perception of the self as “social mirroring”.  Students create a self-concept in part as a reaction to how they are perceived and accepted by the dominant group.  The researchers described how “parachute children” are shipped to the United States to live with relatives, to work, and to take advantage of the educational system.  This process is best described as treating children as “luggage” to enhance parents’ social and economic mobility (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2001, p. 7).  The concepts of “trans-migration,” “sojourners” and “parachute-children” may complicate the self-concept development process among Spanish speaking youngsters in contemporary times.  

As children enter the world of formal education, parents play and essential role in their child’s success (Cordry & Wilson, 2004).  Research on parent involvement tends to be focused on two forms of participation.  McBride and colleagues (2009) define these as school-based involvement, those activities involving direct contact with the school site, and home-based involvement, activities that support a student’s learning but may fall outside of the traditionally viewed roles of school involvement such as conversations about school and homework help.  These informal activities can also include things like trips to museums and the establishment of high academic expectations within the home.  It is the later type of parent involvement that is the focus of this current study.   

To conduct this quantitative study, researchers obtained the 2015 PISA datasets, codebooks, and questionnaires directly from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) website, located at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2015database/. The researchers analyzed the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) student-questionnaire Statistical Program for the Social Sciences (SPSS) data file. Researchers split the SPSS file by country. In addition to descriptive statistics comparing the countries, researchers conducted one-way analyses of variance to determine the extent to which first-generation, second-generation, and native students differed in their sense of belonging (subjective well-being in school), achieving motivation, and parents' support. Although the emphasis was within-country equity, the dependent variables were weighted likelihood estimations, making them appropriate for study across countries.

The study’s findings suggest that there is a connection between national norms and policies regarding immigration and immigrant student well-being. Researchers noted significant differences in student sense of belonging and test anxiety, in which newer students experienced lower levels of belonging and higher levels of anxiety. Regarding achievement motivation and parents' emotional support, these trends were often reversed in which newer students experienced more positive outcomes, specifically higher levels of motivation and emotional support. While the results regarding sense of belonging are troubling, the role of parental support suggest that schools can leverage these relationships to support better outcomes for immigrant students. While students seek to be accepted and to fit in their new society, they do not want to lose their ethnic identity. The desire to maintain their ethnic identity creates a conflict between them and the expectations of members of the new society. Their success depends greatly on maintaining a strong racial ethnic identity while at the same time assimilating into the new culture. For some students this process is transitional while for others it is difficult to accomplish. Some scholars suggest that teachers can bridge cultures and serve as “cultural translators” (Williams et al., 2002, p. 564).

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