Children of Immigrants: Development in Context
The Children of Immigrants: Development in Context (CIDC) study is a longitudinal study of over 300 children from first-generation Cambodian, Dominican and Portuguese families. The purpose is to examine the evolution of children of immigrants' (1) ethnic/racial identity; (2) their school engagement over time, as functions of family immigration history and adaptation, child and school characteristics; and (3) the relationship between ethnic/racial identity and school engagement.
Two cohorts of children (1st & 4th graders) were interviewed five times over three years (first graders were followed up in grades 2 & 3 and fourth graders in grades 5 & 6). They were asked about their ethnic/racial identities, perceptions of ethnic groups' status and racial/ethnic discrimination, and their own attitudes toward school. You may request a copy of our child interviews here.
Parents were interviewed during the second year of data collection about their family's immigration history, demographic background, ethnic practices, and beliefs and practices regarding their children's education. You may request a copy of our parent interview here.
School level data include:
- 93 teacher questionnaires regarding pedagogy and their impressions of the specific children in their classrooms who are part of our study (our Teacher Questionnaires are available by request, here)
- Classroom observations (noting social interactions and multicultural pedagogy and environmental characteristics) in randomly selected classrooms with high concentrations of children from these groups
- Administrative school records of school poverty levels and ethnic/racial compositions and for the grades and absenteeism history for each child
Ethnographies, conducted during the first year, and a social history, from the third year, will be used to contextualize the immigration history of the three communities, the educational system's response to immigrant groups, and the communities' assets as ethnic enclaves.
We are currently in the analysis and publication phase of this study. Several presentations and publications have already been completed using parts of this data (you may request copies here) and we are currently preparing a book based on our full results. To our knowledge, this will be the first published study, using a mixed-methods approach with a cross-cultural sample to: (1) explore, in depth and longitudinally, both the development of ethnic/racial identities and attitudes among children of immigrant parents during middle childhood, rather than adolescence; (2) relate these identities to in-depth, longitudinal assessments of children of immigrant's school engagement; and (3) relate home, school and ethnic enclave environments to the children's evolving identities and school engagement.