This book juxtaposes superdiversity with English-centricity in the US, set against long-standing challenges with migration and language policy recently underlined by Donald Trump’s election. It explores the history, policies, and practices of a Central Ohio adolescent newcomer program seeking to provide an equitable education to its students.
This qualitative case study examines how students in a high school newcomer program experience the development of social and cultural capital. Newcomer programs are created by K-12 schools with large influxes of refugees and immigrants. This case study data stems from a larger ethnographic study of a newcomer program at Georgetown High, an urban secondary school in the Northeast region of the United States. Using Bourdieu’s (1986) social and cultural capital theory as a framework for the study we provide an overview of the literature on the importance of helping newcomers build social and cultural capital. Themes arising from the data as representations of the experiences of newcomers building capital and the role of the teacher in that development is explored further. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the case for research, policy, and practice.
Secondary schools in the United States have been changing with the increased arrival of refugee students with interrupted formal education (SIFE), especially at the secondary schools. Refugee SIFE are faced with barriers developing both language and academic skills. This article describes some of the findings of an ethnographic research study that was conducted in an urban secondary newcomer program with SIFE in Northeast United States. The findings suggest that the refugee SIFE were in dire need of psychological support, had many responsibilities outside of school, and had high aspirations for the future despite their limited knowledge of the U.S. educational system.
Cultivating Capital for High School Newcomers: A Case Study of an Urban Newcomer Classroom
