The Meaning of Being Canadian: A Comparison between Youth of Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Origins

Finding Our Way Home (At School): A Study Of Students’ Experiences Of Bringing Their Home Culture Into The Classroom

“…Vanesh's connection to his ethnic self was consistent with what Lee and Hebert (2006) found when immigrant students connected with their ethnic heritage and showed that they understood multiculturalism to the extent that they were able to recognize ethnic identities associated with their Charter rights (p. 497). Vanesh's positive experience with this unit stemmed from his advantage in having access to his grandparents, and his privilege in being fluent in the language his grandparents spoke, Singhalese.…”

“…It is important, therefore, to facilitate ethnic minority students' acculturation by encouraging them to identify positively with their cultural and ancestral history, rather than adopting a -fake‖ identity simply to fit in with what is considered the norm. Lee and Hebert (2006) confirmed Urrieta and Quach's argument, noting that the immigrant students they researched had strong attachments to their ethnic culture and identity because at their school their ethnocultural identity was recognized and they received group support during their settlement period, allowing them to identify both with the larger political community and their own.…”

Vocabularies of Citizenship: West Coast Secondary Students Describe Their Civic Subjectivities, Skills, and Classrooms

“…The data reveals a relatively engaged, thoughtful, and patriotic picture of Canadian youth on the West coast of Canada; a group that holds both national and global citizenship conceptions in mind, and that looks to interact with their communities. Lee and Hébert (2006) point hopefully to the fluidity and strategic nature of group and national identities as potential patterns for reducing social tension: "It will become increasingly difficult to categorize 'others' and locate them along racialized fault lines in Canadian society…Whether the youth are in Calgary, British Columbia, or Quebec, they are all children of multiculturalism" (pp. 514-515).…”

“…(Incidentally, that these three core themes also characterized results of Myers & Zaman's (2009) results in American youth provides evidence that globalized young adult experiences and values may be more similar across borders than between generations.) Based on the strong national identity responses, Lee and Hébert (2006) argue that "in practice, a diversity of ethnocultural identities does not necessarily diminish association with the national identity in Canada" (p. 517).…”

“…Despite the flurry of research in the 1980s and 1990s, "we have very little information on what is actually going on in classrooms, or on how students or teachers see things" (Osborne, 1995, p. 27). A few notable exceptions point to important currents in youth understandings of participation, identity, and belonging, and in students' negotiations between national and global narratives of citizenship (Giron, 2012;Hildebrand, 2007;Levesque, 2003;Lee & Hébert, 2006;Myers & Zaman, 2009). Generally, research holds that students hold active citizenship in high regard, use a vocabulary of rights and freedoms to describe their civic subjectivities, and work to negotiate between strongly held national patriotism and attachment to globalized value systems.…”