Children in Immigrant Families: Looking to America’s Future

Gender, Development, Values, Adaptation, and Discrimination in Acculturating Adolescents: The Case of Turk Heritage Youth Born and Living in Belgium

“…In addition, younger generation immigrants are exposed more to mainstream cultures (e.g., via schools). Therefore, investigating the way adolescents in immigrant families experience acculturation and intercultural relations with a focus on gender is important for developing social policies aimed at fostering positive development and successful futures for children of immigrants as well as cohesion in society at large (Hernandez et al 2008;Motti-Stefanidi 2008). This study focuses on second-generation immigrant youth of Turk heritage families with a relatively collectivist background but who were born, educated, and live in Belgium, a more individualist Western society.…”

Making the implicit explicit: Supporting teachers to bridge cultures

“…Although Latino families enroll their children in early childhood settings at half the rate of African American or European American families (Matthews & Ewen, 2006), when they do enroll them in high quality programs, there are beneficial outcomes (Hernandez et al, 2008). We surmise that if immigrant Latino children and their families had sustained support for acceptance and use of their "funds of knowledge" (Moll & Greenberg, 1991), in this case, for their collectivistic values and associated skills, then long-term benefits could be optimized.…”

“…They will also need administrative support to build programs that welcome newcomer families, who often require active outreach (Buysse et al, 2005;Hernandez et al, 2008). Ultimately, we need more research on adult learning about cultures, along with systematic research about children living in immigrant families, and a closer look at the differences between immigrant children that do or do not attend preschool.…”

“…In 2005, 21 percent of all U.S. children lived in immigrant families, including 3.1 million children born outside the U.S., and 15.7 million children living with at least one foreign-born parent (Kids Count, 2007; see also Hernandez, Denton, & Macartney, 2008). Most immigrant children are faced with the demand of learning or further developing a new language.…”

“…In this paper, we discuss the Bridging Cultures Project TM , 1 a longitudinal action research project centered on investigating the usefulness of a framework for understanding differences between the cultures of immigrant Latino children (the largest group of immigrants to the United States, Hernandez et al, 2008) and the dominant U.S. culture. At its heart, the Bridging Cultures Project is about professional development that can have a significant impact on teachers' thinking and practices related to the role of sociocultural influences in the classroom, particularly for immigrant Latino children and their families.…”