Confronting the challenge of immigrant student underachievement: A comparative analysis of education policies and programs in Canada, New Zealand and England

Immigrant students consistently demonstrate a performance disadvantage when one considers their achievement against non-immigrant peers. These disadvantages vary across international jurisdictions, suggesting that education system level policies or programs may help to ameliorate or worsen these differences. Our work provides a synthesis of trends from education policies and programs that appear to be associated with more favourable immigrant student achievement outcomes, highlighting three international jurisdictions: Canada, New Zealand, and England. This comparative analysis identifies key features of these education systems that have been associated with the success of their immigrant students. We conclude with a critical view on simple policy borrowing and call for contextually responsive adaptation of promising policies and programs within distinct education systems.

Engaging Politically Disenfranchised Students in Governance

New Jersey City University is an urban, Minority- and Hispanic-Serving Institution with a First-Generation-to-College, commuter, and immigrant student population. How can we engage our students who feel powerless, distrustful, or even threatened by government actors in governance? Will perceptions of governance change with increased exposure to political elites in their communities? Using Community Engaged Learning methods, we asked students to attend civic meetings and courtrooms to observe the inner workings of governance and engage in dialogue with political elites. Journals and surveys reveal that students deconstructed pre-conceived notions of powerlessness, humanized government actors, and became hopeful about change in their communities.

USE OF ART PEDAGOGY IN THE PROCESS OF ADAPTATION OF IMMIGRANT STUDENT TO THE UNIVERSITY

The document contains materials on working with first-year students, who have changed their place of residence in connection with the military action in their homeland. The focus of the paper is on the issue of adaptation of immigrant student to the conditions of the university.We carried out a psychological and pedagogical research using diagnostics of the socio-psychological adaptation of a group of immigrant students (self-acceptance, acceptance of others, emotional comfort, integrity, desire to dominate). We used: Test of Personal Adjustment (C. Rogers, R. Dymond), Eysenck Personality Inventory (H. Eysenck), UCLA Loneliness Scale (D. Russell), Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, TMAS (J. Taylor), method of «Three Trees» E. Klessmani to study the characteristics of inter-group and family relations.The article also analyzed and presented art pedagogy means to help this group of students to overcome difficulties in adapting to the new conditions of life. Namely: elements of a four-component author's program for working with personal orientations and values using the means of art pedagogy in the process of studying basic disciplines

Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism: Redefining Fundamentalism in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)

This article is based on a study of The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), a novel by a Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid. The novel is based on the story of transformation of an expat Pakistani living in New York from a true cosmopolitan to a nationalist. The article will explore the crisis of identity suffered by the protagonist in a new land where he reached as an immigrant student and worker. However, he experienced a resurgence of nationalist and patriotic sentiments within him as 9/ 11 happened in 2001. The force of American nationalism that was imperial in nature, resulting in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iran, triggered resentment in the protagonist who decided to leave America and went back to the country of his origin, Pakistan. During his stay in America, the protagonist redefined fundamentalism as an imperial tendency in the American system while rejecting the accusations hurled towards him of an Islamic fundamentalist. The article will explain that there is a loss of cosmopolitan virtue in the post 9/11 era and the dream of universal peace and harmony is shattered due to unbridled state ambitions to invade foreign territories. The article will conclude with the assertion that the loss of cosmopolitanism and reassertion of national identities give way to confrontation and intolerance destroying the prospects of peace and harmony in a globalized world.

Antirasismens Andra:

The category of the “immigrant student”, which is often used in the educational setting from where the following study collects its data, is indeed an elusive one – especially so when it is employed as a label of students who have no experience of migration at all. The frequent use of the category is even more confusing, considering that Swedish publicity could be described as characterized by a hegemonic anti-racist discourse, including an often reproduced master narrative of a country which – except from a few right wing extremists – is considered to be a nation without racism. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic data from a fieldwork in a high prestigious secondary school in inner city Stockholm, this article examines how narratives of an unruly classroom behavior become associated with ”the young immigrant student” category, and furthermore, how students rhetorically manage the dilemma to tell that story without sounding disparaging. The paper is an investigation of anti-racist waysoftalkingaboutfailing students as the ethnic or racial Others.

Experimenting with creativity, immigration, language, power, and technology: a research agencement

Purpose This paper is the actualization of a researcher’s attempt to engage, both conceptually and methodologically, with the dynamic and ever-creative connections and forces associated with the schooling experiences of immigrant students. The research reported that in this paper comprises part of a three-year research project funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and focuses on the interrelationships between immigration, technology and pop culture in a Canadian French-language secondary school. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from new materialist thought, the experience of one immigrant student is put to work with(in) the Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts of agencement, machines, language and power (pouvoir, puissance) with(in) the rhizoanalysis of a short video clip provided by the student. Findings With(in) the rhizoanalysis, the publication machine emerges as a force that could potentially affect the expression of one’s becoming citizen, and hacking emerges as a force that could contribute to the destabilization of the publication machine’s power (pouvoir). Originality/value The originality of this paper is that readers are also invited to contribute to this experimentation in contact with the real.