Hee Jin Bang

With high rates of migration worldwide in the past decade, industrialized nations have witnessed substantial growth in the diversity of their populations and challenges to the civic and political status quo. This paper focuses on France, among the top countries sought by immigrants. Survey data were collected from 632 students from four ethnically diverse high schools in the Paris region, of whom 362 were between ages 14 and 17. We examine patterns of anticipated involvement in three indices of political and civic engagement, with the goal of identifying the characteristics that significantly contribute to explaining each. Results showed that most demographic characteristics are relatively weak in explaining the outcomes. Knowledge and attitudes developed in school, along with the effects of contact with family, peers, and more distal contexts, are important antecedents of political and civic engagement, although the magnitude of the effects differs for males and females.

This article presents an investigation of the reliability of a rubric-based writing assessment system, the National Writing Project's (NWP) Analytic Writing Continuum (AWC), which applies both holistic and analytic scoring. Data from double-scored student writing samples collected over several national scoring events (2005 to 2011) were used. First examined was the extent to which scorers trained to apply the AWC tended to agree with each other on the quality of various attributes of student writing (inter-rater agreement rates). Next considerations were how consistently groups of scorers applied the standards of AWC over multiple scoring events (cross-time reliability), and how consistently the attributes of the AWC collectively represented the construct of writing (internal consistency reliability). Finally, generalizability analyses were conducted to determine the degree to which the observed score variances were attributable to two sources of measurement error -- scorers and scoring environment (grade group). Reliability examined from consensus, consistency, and measurement approaches indicate that the AWC assessment system generates highly reliable scoring of both holistic and analytic components of writing. The AWC assessment system includes expert scorers, training procedures, and materials as essential components and serves purposes beyond assessment of writing. It provides a common framework for structuring professional development and coordinating research and evaluation programs, encouraging the growth of professional learning communities and improved understanding of the links between professional development, classroom practice, and student writing performance.

This study examines the homework practices of eight teachers working in a high school designed to serve newcomer immigrant students. Individual structured interviews were conducted in which teachers working in an innovative setting explained their purposes of assigning homework, their beliefs about factors affecting their students' homework completion, and any adjustments they may make in designing or assessing homework for their immigrant students. The responses of these teachers provide insight into challenges that newcomer students encounter in their efforts to complete assignments outside of class, as well as ways in which homework may be adapted to support student learning. Implications for schools and teachers serving diverse students are discussed.

A significant body of research has addressed factors associated with homework completion among mainstream English-speaking students, yet there is little such research focusing on immigrant adolescents. This study uses data from the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study to examine individual and ecological context characteristics associated with homework completion among newcomer immigrant students from Central America, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and China. Regression analyses showed that strong academic skills, classroom engagement, and school violence were significant predictors of homework completion. Additionally, several indirect effects were found. Students’ classroom engagement mediated the effects of parental employment and family composition on their homework completion. Classroom engagement and academic skills also mediated the effect of gender on homework completion. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

The author examined how characteristics related to individual, family, and school environments contribute to immigrant students’ homework completion. Participants were 192 newcomers in an urban high school designed to serve English language learners. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted with data compiled from a larger project on role of homework in immigrant adolescents’ academic lives. The author found that students’ homework completion is shaped by (a) gender, engagement in school, homework environment and learning styles; (b) parental homework support and family conflict; and (c) perceived school violence and school homework supports. The effect of perceived school violence on homework completion differed for boys and girls. Boys’ homework completion was more adversely affected by higher perceptions of violence at school than that of girls.

Immigration to the United States presents both challenges and opportunities that affect students' academic achievement. Using a 5-year longitudinal, mixed-methods approach, we identified varying academic trajectories of newcomer immigrant students from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. Latent class growth curve analysis revealed that although some newcomer students performed at high or improving levels over time, others showed diminishing performance. Multinomial logistic regressions identified significant group differences in academic trajectories, particularly between the high-achieving youth and the other groups. In keeping with ecological–developmental and stage–environment fit theories, School Characteristics (school segregation rate, school poverty rate, and student perceptions of school violence), Family Characteristics (maternal education, parental employment, and household structure), and Individual Characteristics (academic English proficiency, academic engagement, psychological symptoms, gender, and 2 age-related risk factors, number of school transitions and being overaged for grade placement) were associated with different trajectories of academic performance. A series of case studies triangulate many of the quantitative findings as well as illuminate patterns that were not detected in the quantitative data. Thus, the mixed-methods approach sheds light on the cumulative developmental challenges that immigrant students face as they adjust to their new educational settings.

As many immigrant students are in the process of acquiring English language proficiency, evaluating and assigning grades to immigrant youth can pose particular challenges. Grades assigned for oral or written products may underestimate English language learners’ knowledge, content skills or achievement. Conversely, relying excessively on effort or class behavior rather than actual academic performance may inflate immigrant students’ grades. This study examined the final year (2002) data of the five-year Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation (LISA) study. At the start of the original study, the participants were recently arrived immigrant youth (ages 9–14) who were recruited from seven public school districts in the USA in Massachusetts and California. Using data collected through structured student interviews and behavior checklists completed by teachers, we conducted hierarchical regression analyses to identify the factors that contributed significantly to immigrant students’ grades and to their course understanding. In this exploratory study, grades assigned to immigrant students were largely determined by whether they do their homework and their English language proficiency. Teacher evaluations of immigrant students’ level of course understanding were largely determined by students’ class behaviors, English language proficiency and homework completion.

Research in second language acquisition and reading in particular indicate that certain literacy skills transfer across languages. This study examines the reading strategies used by advanced Korean and Chinese ESL learners. Particular attention is devoted to how word recognition and processing skills developed in learners’ native languages (L1) may influence the type of strategies used in determining meanings of unfamiliar words when reading in English (L2). Given that Korean is an alphabetic language and Chinese is an ideographic language, we hypothesize that Korean ESL learners would generally use phonological processing strategies, while Chinese ESL learners would generally use visual-orthographic processing strategies. Six graduate-level students, three from each language background, were asked to read two different texts. Through oral recall, structured interviews, and questionnaire of reading strategies, we examine the kinds of strategies used and the level of comprehension achieved by the participants. Findings confirm the hypothesis that Korean ESL learners tend to rely on phonological, while Chinese ESL learners tend to rely on visual orthographic strategies when reading English texts. The learners’ English language proficiency, however, may be a more important factor contributing to the level of L2 reading comprehension achieved rather than the strategies used.