Academic achievement of children with and without migration backgrounds in an immersion primary school: A pilot study (original) (raw)
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2020
Literacy acquisition is one of the primary goals of school education, and usually it takes place in the national language of the respective country. At the same time, schools accommodate pupils with different home languages who might or might not be fluent in the national language and who start from other linguistic backgrounds in their acquisition of literacy. While it is safe to say that schools with a monolingual policy are not prepared to deal with the factual multilingualism in their classrooms in a systematic way, bilingual pupils have to deal with it nonetheless. The interdisciplinary and comparative research project “Literacy Acquisition in Schools in the Context of Migration and Multilingualism” (LAS) investigated the practical processes of literacy acquisition in two countries, Germany and Turkey, where the monolingual orientation of schools is as much a reality as are the multilingual backgrounds of many of their pupils. The basic assumption was that pupils cope with the ...
Primary Education of Migrant Background Children in the Lingua Franca
Education is an essential aspect of enculturation of all children. Giving the children of migrants opportunities to fully develop their potential is important for their well-being in society and for social cohesion in the receiving countries. But migrant students for the most part have lower educational outcomes than native students at the same level. Extensive research has determined the factors that affect the performance of migrant students in the school setting. These barriers to equal educational achievement for migrant children are present to varying degrees in countries all over the world. This paper examines instruction in the national language of primary level migrant children in various nations with an eye to see which educational measures are producing results and which countries have models that are worth imitating.
Primary Education of Migrant Background Children in the Lingua Franca a Random Survey
2015
Education is an essential aspect of enculturation of all children. Giving the children of migrants opportunities to fully develop their potential is important for their well-being in society and for social cohesion in the receiving countries. But migrant students for the most part have lower educational outcomes than native students at the same level. Extensive research has determined the factors that affect the performance of migrant students in the school setting. These barriers to equal educational achievement for migrant children are present to varying degrees in countries all over the world. This paper examines instruction in the national language of primary level migrant children in various nations with an eye to see which educational measures are producing results and which countries have models that are worth imitating.
Language Contacts at the Crossroads of Disciplines, 2014
German foreign language classrooms are increasingly populated by students with diverse language backgrounds. Side by side with monolingual German learners of English as a foreign language we find students for whom German is a second language, and whose first language may be Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Polish, Spanish, Italian, or Greek – to name just a few common examples. In these contexts, English is learnt as a second and third (or fourth language within the confines of the same classroom). Investigating in which ways the acquisition of English in these groups differs from that in their “monolingual” German peer group can give us important insights into positive and negative effects of multilingual language repertoires on foreign language acquisition. Educational studies in Germany (DESI 2008) suggest positive effects for children with migration backgrounds, at least for the initial state of foreign language acquisition. When investigating linguistic transfer effects, external factors play an important role. Trying to bypass external factors by choosing a homogeneous group with a similar socioeconomic background may lead to transfer effects that are highly artificial and in no way representative. Moreover, finding a truly homogenous group is a near impossible endeavor. In our contribution, we focus on external variables to control differences in language attainment, while keeping the sample as diverse and representative as possible. We offer a qualitative linguistic analysis of the English(es) acquired by randomly chosen bi- and monolingual individuals learning English in the context of the German school system.
International Journal of Developmental Science
New experiences, challenges, and opportunities inherent in biographical transitions are expected to foster the psychosocial development of individuals. Our study investigated, first, developmental gains in children's language competence, social support seeking, and self control following the transitions to kindergarten and school; second, whether native Germans, ethnic German repatriates, Russian Jewish and Turkish migrants differed in developmental gains following these transitions; and third, whether differences in mother's education, financial standing, or network contacts accounted for ethnic group differences in developmental gains. In total, 111 mothers of kindergarten-aged and 179 mothers of schoolaged children were interviewed twice, before and after the respective transition, with a oneyear-interval. Results showed that, according to mothers' reports, children increased in language competence and self control after both transitions. The increase for some outcomes varied, however, between ethnic groups and was accounted for by differences in maternal education. Results underscore the importance of immigrants' education for the positive development of their offspring and of institutional opportunities in compensating for early disadvantages.
Educational performance of native and immigrant children from various countries of origin
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2008
Mostly due to the lack of suitable data, cross-national research on the integration of migrant pupils is still scarce. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question of the extent to which native and first-and second-generation migrants from various regions of origin, living in thirteen different countries of destination, differ in their scholastic ability. Using the PISA 2003 data, we focus primarily on the impact of origin and destination effects on the scholastic achievement of migrants.