Icelandic-Born Students of Immigrant Background: Falling Between the Cracks

• In Event: Explorations of the Linguistic and Cultural Knowledge of Adolescents in Schools

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative study on the academic and social successes and challenges of Icelandic-born students of immigrant background as they complete compulsory school and move on to upper-secondary education. The theoretical framework of the study includes multicultural education (Banks, 2015) and multilingual education (Chumak-Horbatsch, 2012; Cummins, 2004). The findings shed light on the students’ educational experiences, their multilingual language use. The students exhibited a wealth of linguistic and cultural knowledge and navigated successfully within their multilingual and multicultural environments. The findings reveal instead of using culturally responsive teaching to tap on the students’resources for their learning the school enforce monolingual language policy.

Authors

• Anh-Dao Tran, University of Iceland

• Hanna Ragnarsdottir, University of Iceland

• Samuel Currey Lefever, University of Iceland