Immigrant Student Achievement and Education Policy: Cross-Cultural Approaches


Louis Volante, Brock University, UNU-MERIT

Immigrant students often face multiple challenges that impact their educational achievement. Thus, it is not surprising that prominent international achievement measures such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have consistently reported an achievement gap between native and first- and second-generation immigrant student groups around the world – a result that is often referred to as the immigrant student performance disadvantage. This presentation examines disaggregated PISA results in greater detail across the European Union and popular immigrant destination countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The discussion juxtaposes national results against societal level and school system features that have been more (or less) successful in mitigating the immigrant student performance disadvantage. Collectively, the analysis isolates key characteristics of international jurisdictions that have been associated with enhanced immigrant student outcomes and discusses the implications for national and educational policymakers.



Venue: 0.16

Date: 20 June 2018

Time: 15:00 - 16:00  CEST


UNU-MERIT