ERIC Number: EJ891844
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1467-9620
EISSN: N/A
Children of Immigrants and Educational Expectations: The Roles of School Composition
Wells, Ryan
Teachers College Record, v112 n6 p1679-1704 2010
Background/Context: Many children of immigrants are not enrolled in high schools that sufficiently meet their needs, and subsequently, many are not making a successful transition to, and/or successfully completing, higher education. As immigration grows in the United States, educators and policy makers must understand how the educational processes for children of immigrants differ from nonimmigrants. Because expectations for higher education are a necessary, though insufficient, step toward college attendance and degree attainment, and because students have these attitudes influenced by the schools they attend, I examine high school composition for its effects on educational expectations and how compositional effects differ between children of immigrants and nonimmigrants. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study intends to be another step on the path toward understanding the educational processes of children of immigrants specifically, and of all students more broadly, as the immigrant population grows in U.S. schools. Toward those ends, this study is based on two overarching research questions: (1) How do the immigrant compositions of U.S. secondary schools affect the educational expectations of all students? (2) How do the compositions of U.S. secondary schools affect the educational expectations of children of immigrants differently than nonimmigrant students? Research Design: The research questions are addressed via secondary data analysis using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002/2004), which were collected by the National Center for Education Statistics. I explore school composition effects on a binary dependent variable indicating whether a 12th-grade student expects to complete a graduate or professional degree. This study emphasizes a critical-quantitative approach by demonstrating that common theories and assumptions about educational expectations may be inaccurate for children of immigrants in today's schools. Conclusions/Recommendations: Results show that children of immigrants are affected differently by school composition than are nonimmigrants, and in ways that contradict commonly accepted theoretical views. Specifically, this analysis demonstrates that comparative and normative theories of school effects are not accurate for children of immigrants, at least not to the same degree as they are for nonimmigrants. This is a reminder to researchers and practitioners alike that subgroups of students, in this case the children of immigrants, may not be affected by schools in similar ways.
Descriptors: Higher Education, College Attendance, Academic Aspiration, Learning Processes, Data Analysis, Immigrants, Educational Environment, Expectation, High School Students, School Demography, Comparative Analysis, Student Educational Objectives, Outcomes of Education, Misconceptions, Theories, Longitudinal Studies
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education; High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: Practitioners; Researchers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A