ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Category: Research

  • New York Times series on immigration: Teaching newcomer children

    Beginning today, the New York Times will run a series on immigration, inviting a national debate on the topic in the United States. The first installment is a discussion on how best to educate immigrant children. To be followed up this Sunday.
    The series will be interactive, inviting comments from readers and includes a searchable database of the history of ethnic diversity in each school district and an interactive map showing census data on settlement over the past century.
    Today’s stories include: 

    Robert Linquanti comments on “No Child Left Behind: Pros and Cons”. Linquanti is with WestEd research agency in San Francisco.
    Chicago superintendent Roger Prosise writes a piece entitled “For Bilingual Education, You Need Bilingual Teachers”
    Co-directors at NYU Immigration Studies, Marcelo Orozco and Carola Orozco write on “Teach in Two Languages”.
    A California principal, Linda Mikels counters with a piece entitled “No, Teach in English”.

    Looks like a fascinating series. Follow it online at the New York Times “Room for Debate” webpage.

  • Discussion paper: Immigrant serving agencies' perspective on immigrant children's needs

    A new Discussion Paper: Immigrant Serving Agencies’ Perspective on the Issues and Needs of Immigrant and Refugee Children in Canada, by Dr Susan Chuang, University of Guelph and the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance (CISSA).
    From the Executive Summary: 

    While immigrant and refugee children and youth are not usually apart of the decision to emigrate and/or flee their home country (in the case of refugees) once in Canada, most federally funded immigrant settlement programs and services target adults. There is a growing consensus across Canada among service providers, school boards and broad based youth mandated agencies that much more must be done to adequately support immigrant and refugee children and youth. Over the past 15 years in particular, immigrant serving agencies (ISAs) across Canada have responded. ISAs have put in place through often piece meal, short-term project based funding and local fundraising activities a variety of innovative after school and summer social, academic and recreational interventions to help ease the transition of IRCY into Canada. These projects and programs are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

    Issues addressed in the discussion paper include emerging trends, organizational responses, ideal programming and considerations for Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

  • Canadian attitudes toward learning

    The Canadian Council on Learning has released a report on its findings from the 2008 Survey of Canadian Attitudes Toward Learning.
    The survey examines elementary, secondary, post-secondary school-related learning, work-related learning and health and learning and early childhood learning.

  • Social Policy Report: Children in immigrant families

    The Society for Research in Child Development has released a Social Policy Report entitled “Children in Immigrant Families: Looking to America’s Future”. From the Abstract:

    Children in immigrant families account for nearly one-in-four children in the U.S. They are the fastest growing population of children, and they are leading the nation’s racial and ethnic transformation. As a consequence, baby-boomers will depend heavily for economic support during retirement on race-ethnic minorities, many of whom grew up in immigrant families. Because the current circumstances and future prospects of children in immigrant families are important not only to these children themselves, but to all Americans, this report uses data from Census 2000 to portray the lives of children with immigrant parents and highlights policy and program initiatives that will foster the future success of these children.

  • National strategy for early literacy: Invitation to participate

    The Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network (CLLRNet) is working on a national strategy for early litearcy, inviting submissions and participation in a national consultation. From the CLLRNet site:

    The National Strategy for Early Literacy (NSEL) is a Canada-wide initiative to improve the literacy skills of Canadian children and youth.  NSEL engages a broad coalition of organizations and individuals to understand and describe what can be done to improve literacy outcomes for young Canadians, and to put these actions into practice.  The conclusion of the NSEL process will be a coherent, feasible, evidence-based national strategy for early literacy, including a clear statement of activities required and of the organizations that must take responsibility for these actions.
    The NSEL initiative is being coordinated by the Canadian Language and Literacy Network (CLLRNet; www.cllrnet.ca), a Canada-wide network engaging practitioners, policymakers, researchers and trainees in every province and territory with the common goal of improving literacy skills in Canada.
    Public consultations relating to the National Strategy initiative will be held across Canada in March 2009.  These consultations will provide an opportunity for presentations that are focused on issues relevant to improving the literacy skills of young Canadians by individuals and organizations.
    Parties interested in presenting at these consultations or in providing written input to the consultation process are invited to submit an information brief in advance of the consultations.
    Information briefs should be sent by February 15, 2009 to: nselsubmission@cllrnet.ca.
    Suggested Guidelines for Information Briefs
    Submissions should address an aspect of the challenge: “what should be done to improve the literacy skills of Canadian children and youth?”   It is expected that most submissions will include the following components:

    1. The role of the issue discussed in the overall challenge of improving literacy outcomes;
    2. Statement and description of the specific actions proposed;
    3. Discussion of the responsibilities for and mechanisms by which such actions would take place;
    4. Estimates of the expected impacts of these actions;
    5. Discussion of the resources required for such actions to be implemented;
    6. Discussion of how such activities and impacts should be monitored, evaluated and improved upon; and
    7. References to sources cited in and supporting the contents of the submission.

    For more information, visit the CLLRNet site.

  • The influence of culture on early childhood

    Zero to Three has release a comprehensive overview of the influence of culture on early childhood in the US. The Changing Face of the United States: The Influence of Culture on Early Child Development, by Beth Maschinot, PhD, with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Bernard van Leer Foundation posits a new definition for understanding culture in the context of early childhood as:

    Culture is a shared system of meaning, which includes values, beliefs, and assumptions expressed in daily interactions of individuals within a group through a definite pattern of language, behavior, customs, attitudes and practices.

    This reworked definition of “culture” provides a way of expanding the discussion and extending it to young children and families. The report challenges early childhood practitioners in reexamining how useful traditional research studies have been in helping better understand “culture”.
    The report summarizes the findings of a 2007 literature review, conducted by Zero To Three and offers information and resources for early childhood practitioners on how to address the needs of a growingly diverse population. The report suggests that “differences in parent-child interaction styles between ethnic groups may be a function of the group’s place in wider society rather than a cultural difference per se”.

  • Gender-based barriers to settlement and integration for live-in caregivers: A review of the literature

    The Ontario Metropolis Centre/the Joint Centre of Excellence for Research in Immigration Studies (CERIS) has released a literature review on barriers to integration and settlement for live-in caregivers.
    Authors Denise L. Spitzer and Sara Torres ask what is known about the women who migrate to Canada under the federal live-in caregiver program and the barriers they face in settling and integrating in a new community. The paper provides historical, economic and demographic information and concludes with several policy recommendations.

  • Vocabulary gap

    University of Calgary Researcher Hettie Roessingh has received a grant to continue her research into the vocabulary gap among immigrant children. Funded by TELUS and the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research.
    Roessingh’s research “indicates that younger arriving immigrant children perform less well academically than do older arriving immigrant children. Further, Canadian-born children of immigrants fare even worse in these tests, despite promising results in Grade 3 tests in literacy development.
    “So what happens to these young learners? Roessingh’s research indicates that most lack the comparatively extensive range of vocabulary used by native English speaking children.
    “The research shows that by age 5 or 6, most native English speaking children have a vocabulary of around 5,000 words. ELL children have significantly fewer English words”. (Source: UofC News Release, Nov 20/08).
    Read more at the University of Calgary ‘what’s new’ pages.

  • Promising practices in integration

    The Public Policy Forum, an independent policy think tank, has released a report: From Immigration to Participation: Promising Practices in Integration.
    The report examined six priority areas as important factors in integration. They are:

    1. Employment programs and services
    2. Access to information
    3. Language acquisition
    4. Acceptance and understanding
    5. Role of the school system (K-12)
    6. Social support

    The report identifies 4 major gaps and challenges:

    Integration needs to move beyond settlement and be more proactive around “empowering newcomers”.
    Programs must “promote interactions among newcomers”.
    Innovation is important, but community-based initiatives need to demonstrate positive outcomes to alternative approaches.
    Human resources in community-based agencies needs strengthening.   

    Recommendations from the report:

    “Promote the relevance and value of integration in order to foster mutual responsibility
    “Offer more opportunities for two-way interaction
    “Allocate adequate funding to encourage innovation”.

  • Bernard van Leer Foundation ~ Parents and professionals managing diversity in early childhood

    The Bernard van Leer Foundation has released findings in a paper entitled Making Our Way, resulting from their 2-year long Parents and Diversity project. The project looked at building partnerships between childcare providers and parents and examined how childcare providers met the differing needs of an increasingly diverse population of parents and children.
    The project sought to quantify parental involvement along four concepts of:

    • living together
    • working together
    • thinking together
    • taking decisions together.

    A tool was developed by lead researchers for this initiative and provides an interesting way to assess parent participation. The report describes how practitioners, policy makers and researchers can move forward in terms of addressing diversity in the early years.
    Of particular interest is Chapter 2: Partnerships with Immigrant Parents: No Standard Formulas. From the chapter:

    “Even in standard educational settings, such as childcare centres, the pedagogic dialogue with parents does not appear to be as good as it should be … parents report that they have no say in pedagogic policy such as the content of the daily programme…. Generally, discussions are held with parents about caring for their children, but rarely is there any attempt at harmonising the home/school situation. Parents are seldom, if ever, involved in decisions on intercultural objectives and methods. The researchers say that many opportunities for educators and parents to help one another are being missed”.