*Article* **Exploring Academic Self-Concepts Depending on Acculturation Profile. Investigation of a Possible Factor for Immigrant Students' School Success**

**Nanine Lilla \*, Sebastian Thürer, Wim Nieuwenboom and Marianne Schüpbach**

Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany; sebastian.thuerer@uni-bamberg.de (S.T.); wim.nieuwenboom@fhnw.ch (W.N.); marianne.schuepbach@fu-berlin.de (M.S.)

**\*** Correspondence: nanine.lilla@fu-berlin.de

**Abstract:** Academic achievement and academic self-concepts are reciprocally related; hence, investigating academic self-concepts should offer a potential approach for gaining a better understanding of immigrant students' (lack of) school success. Proposing that immigrant students' acculturation orientations need to be taken into account, in this study, we empirically investigate whether immigrant students' general and domain-specific academic self-concept facets differ from those of non-immigrant students depending on their acculturation profile. Based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we find initial indications that immigrant students' academic self-concept facets are subject to their acculturation profile. The idea that acculturation may influence the known comparisons relevant for self-concept development will be discussed.

**Keywords:** academic self-concept; acculturation; immigrant students; school success

#### **1. Introduction**

Addressing academic self-concepts, i.e., the individuals' self-perception of his or her academic abilities in general and in different domains [1] can help gain insight into educational inequalities as academic self-concepts have been shown to be reciprocally related to a variety of academic outcomes [2,3]. While this has been done with regard to gender and socio-economic differences [4], the study of academic self-concepts has not received much attention in examining immigrant students' academic outcomes [5]. Therefore, this study seeks to improve our understanding of the (lack of) academic success of immigrant students, which has been repeatedly revealed by international school achievement studies, by examining the academic self-concept of immigrant students in Germany.

In one of the first studies to investigate the academic self-concept of immigrant students in Germany over 20 years ago, Roebers, Mecheril, and Schneider [6] hypothesized that immigrant students would show lower academic self-concepts than non-immigrant students due to the "acculturative stress" they face during adaptation to the new cultural context. This notion referred to Berry [7] and his understanding of migration as a critical life event, which may result in a lack of confidence in one's own skills. Although this reasoning has been taken up by others addressing immigrant students' academic self-concept in relation to their academic achievement [8], studies so far have widely failed to consider that Berry's acculturation model proposes four different patterns of acculturation, which are associated with different degrees of acculturative stress and adaptation outcomes.

To narrow this research gap, in this study, we aim to investigate immigrant students' academic self-concepts depending on their acculturation orientation. To do so, we employ data on ninth grade students in Germany collected within the framework of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Moreover, for a complex examination of immigrant students' acculturation orientation, acculturation profiles based on Latent Profile

**Citation:** Lilla, N.; Thürer, S.; Nieuwenboom, W.; Schüpbach, M. Exploring Academic Self-Concepts Depending on Acculturation Profile. Investigation of a Possible Factor for Immigrant Students' School Success. *Educ. Sci.* **2021**, *11*, 432. https:// doi.org/10.3390/educsci11080432

Academic Editor: Elena Makarova and Wassilis Kassis

Received: 5 June 2021 Accepted: 19 July 2021 Published: 16 August 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Analysis considering affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of acculturation will be utilized in exploring different academic self-concept facets as a function of immigrant students' acculturation.

#### **2. Theoretical and Empirical Background**

#### *2.1. Acculturation Orientations and Immigrant Students' School Success*

#### 2.1.1. Theory of Acculturation

Immigrants have to juggle two different cultures, i.e., the culture of the country of their or their family's origin and the culture of the country of residence. Considering the situation of immigrant students, everyday life entails switching back and forth between the family and the school context with both possibly being connected with different values and beliefs, languages, and cultural practices. Acculturation describes the processes following when different cultures are in enduring contact, resulting in changes on the side of one or both cultures involved [9]. Regarding the individual, these processes of change are also referred to as psychological acculturation [10] and are likely to occur on different levels, e.g., altering attitudes and/or behavioral changes [7,11].

Berry [7,12] postulated four different patterns of cultural orientation in his acculturation model: Integration, where the individual's orientation toward both the culture of the country of origin and the host culture is strong; assimilation, where the individual's orientation toward the culture of origin is weak while it is strong toward the host culture; separation describes the opposite pattern, where the individual's orientation toward the culture of origin is strong while it is weak toward the host culture; and marginalization, where the individual's orientation toward both the culture of origin and the host culture is weak. Following a stress and coping paradigm, Berry proposed that acculturation orientations differentially relate to different levels of acculturative stress and therefore may promote or hamper successful adaptation. In general, integration is considered most adaptive because this pattern is associated with the lowest level of acculturative stress. Marginalization, on the other hand, is considered the least adaptive. The adaptability of assimilation and separation is considered mediocre, since these patterns relate to intermediate levels of acculturative stress.

Based on Berry's fourfold acculturation model, acculturation researchers have developed new conceptualizations and found new approaches to gain a more complex understanding of the acculturation of immigrants. Among the most prominent approaches, there have been models including influences of context or situation, emphasizing more strongly that acculturation is not only a consequence of individual decisions and expresses itself in the same way in all domains of life [13]. Further, Motti-Stefanidi, Berry, Chryssochoou, Sam, and Phinney [14] were the first to address the issue that a broad understanding of immigrant children's and youths' adaptation and adjustment needs to consider developmental processes and developmental tasks that are intertwined with their acculturation (for a detailed review on the evolution of acculturation models please refer to Juang & Syed [15]).

#### 2.1.2. Immigrant Students' Acculturation and Academic Achievement

Employing the notion of different acculturation orientations into studies, empirically investigating immigrant students' school success has shown that the academic achievement of students from ethnic minority backgrounds in fact relates to their acculturation orientation. In an attempt to systematize the findings of empirical research on acculturation in the school context, Makarova and Birman [16] found that a bi-cultural orientation, i.e., integration, was predominantly positively associated with the school adaptation of minority youths. However, some studies also identified assimilative attitudes as beneficial for student performance, and psychological and behavioral adaptation. Since the review included mainly studies conducted in the US (school) context, it is difficult to directly transfer the findings to others (school contexts), as the link between acculturation orientation and adaptation is context-dependent [7].

With regard to Germany, there has been some research in recent years investigating relationships between immigrant students' acculturation orientation and school-related outcomes, showing relationships with competence and grades [17–20], and even envisaged school-leaving certificate [21]. Furthermore, acculturation has been shown to relate to other outcomes than achievement, such as immigrant students' emotional school engagement [22]. The general pattern of findings shown in these studies is that a strong orientation toward the German culture—as is the case for integrated and assimilated immigrant students—is linked to more favorable outcomes on the side of immigrant students' school success.

Generalizations across these studies, however, are problematic, as there is a lack of methodological consensus regarding the operationalization of immigrant students' acculturation pattern. Whereas in the majority of studies, acculturation attitudes and ethnic identity have been in focus [17–19,22], Lilla and colleagues [21] identified patterns of acculturation, taking affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of acculturation into account [20,21]. Conducting latent profile analysis in a sample of 4400 immigrant students from secondary schools in Germany, four distinct acculturation profiles were identified. Three of the profiles identified resembled assimilation, integration, and separation. The fourth profile, which was characterized by a rather ambiguous tendency of orientation for all of the considered aspects irrespective of the culture behind, was labeled *indifferent*. Latent profile analysis offers the advantage of empirically modeling acculturation without anticipating any patterns in advance, and has already been applied occasionally in acculturation research [23–26]. In the sample of secondary immigrant students in Germany, the indifferent profile was rather prevalent, comprising 46% of immigrant students, while the assimilated profile comprised only 12%, and the integrated profile and the separated profile comprised 20 and 22% of immigrant students, respectively. In line with the general pattern of findings from studies conducted in Germany, Lilla and colleagues found that students with integrated acculturation profiles and students with assimilated acculturation profiles did not differ from non-immigrant students whereas students with separated and indifferent acculturation profiles achieved lower reading competences [20], and were more likely to envisage a low school-leaving certificate instead of an Abitur, i.e., the highest school-leaving certificate than non-immigrant students [21].

#### *2.2. Academic Self-Concept and Immigrant Students' School Success*

#### 2.2.1. Academic Self-Concept

Academic self-concept is defined as the individual's self-perception of his or her academic ability in general and in specific domains [1,27]. Based on the notion of a hierarchical and multidimensional self-concept structure [28], the academic self-concept is widely assumed to consist of a general and several domain-specific facets (for a detailed discussion on the structure of the academic self-concept, please refer to Arens, Jansen, Preckel, Schmidt, and Brunner [29]). The Marsh and Shavelson [30] model of academic self-concept, which proposes that academic self-concept is divided into a verbal self-concept and a mathematical self-concept, also specifies how students develop their academic self-concept through both an internal and external frame of reference. The external frame of reference involves comparisons with significant others within the social environment [31]. Especially the context of the classroom is a relevant source for social comparisons of one's performance (e.g., how well do I do compared to my classmates). The performance feedback from teachers and grades function as external signals in social comparison. In addition, parents and further significant others within the family have been discussed as relevant sources for the development of the academic self-concept [32,33]. The internal frame of reference involves intra-individual comparisons such as temporal comparisons, where current performance is compared with previous achievements [34], and dimensional comparisons, where the performance in one domain is set as standards of comparison for the evaluation of the performance in other domains [35]. If there is a discrepancy in performance between

the domains, the self-concept in the domain with the better performance is valued more positively and the self-concept in the weaker discipline is devalued.

#### 2.2.2. Academic Self-Concept and Academic Achievement

Numerous studies give empirical support for the relationship between academic selfconcept and academic achievement [27,30,36–38]. Based on the finding that the relationship with academic achievement was especially strong when the link between domain-specific self-concept and domain-specific achievement was regarded [38,39], it has been suggested that verbal self-concept and mathematical self-concept should be considered, rather than focusing on a single general facet of academic self-concept. In consequence, the verbal self-concept and the mathematical self-concept have been extensively researched, showing strong relationships with achievement in L1 subjects and mathematical subjects, respectively. Also, the link showed to be more positive when grades instead of standardized test results were used as indicators for domain-specific achievement [40]. Though the relationships between achievement and general academic self-concept were shown to be less strong, general academic self-concept also proved to be a valid dimension.

Whereas the causal ordering has been in question for some time, today empirical evidence suggests a reciprocal relationship between students' academic self-concepts and academic achievement [3,41]. Further, academic self-concept has been shown to impact interest or intrinsic motivation [42,43], educational aspirations, school attainment, and learning behavior [2,3], as well as education-related decisions such as course choice and subject interest [44,45].

#### 2.2.3. Immigrant Students' Academic Self-Concept and Academic Achievement

Based on the notion of a reciprocal relationship between academic achievement and academic self-concept, for immigrant students it has been typically hypothesized that due to their weak(er) academic performance, they lack confidence in their own abilities [6,8].

However, empirical investigations frequently observed that immigrant students, on average, demonstrate considerable positive academic self-concepts despite their low academic achievement. For example, Seo, Shen, and Benner's [46] investigation of the link between self-concept and academic achievement in minority students in the US found that Black and Latinx students demonstrated lower academic achievement (GPA and standardized test scores) but not lower academic self-concepts (general and domain-specific) than their White peers. Furthermore, the impact of value in schoolwork, which was hypothesized to be lower in Black and Latinx adolescents due to gradual disidentification with school following from repeated negative academic experiences [47], and external attributions, i.e., perceived school fairness, were considered. Neither helped explain the paradox of positive academic self-concept but low academic achievement: Black and Latinx students showed to place greater value in schoolwork, which was positively related to academic self-concept regardless of students' ethnicity. In addition, external attribution did not explain the paradox as a later self-concept showed to be similarly related to previous achievement between Black and White adolescents and even more closely related among Latinx adolescents.

In a recent study in Germany, Siegert and Roth [33] focused on the general academic self-concept of ninth graders with a Turkish immigrant background. Descriptive analyses showed no difference in the levels of academic self-concept between non-immigrant students and immigrant students with Turkish background despite lower competence levels in reading and mathematics and higher proportions in attending the lowest school track [Hauptschule]. Considering family background, gender, average competencies on the individual and class level, and type of school attended, however, their analysis revealed significantly more positive academic self-concepts for Turkish immigrant students than for non-immigrant students. More positive general academic self-concepts were especially true for Turkish immigrant students attending Gymnasium, i.e., the highest school track. As a possible starting point for explaining their results, the authors draw on Billmann-Mahecha

and Tiedemann's [48] assumption that Turkish immigrant students possibly ignore negative feedback to protect self-esteem and rather compare themselves within their social environment to family members who often exhibit low levels of education themselves.

In another German study conducted with secondary students, Schöber, Retelsdorf, and Köller [49] did not find significant differences in verbal self-concept between immigrant and non-immigrant students although immigrant students' achievement was significantly lower. Longitudinal analysis revealed reciprocal effects between achievements in the language domain and verbal self-concept, which were robust regardless of the type of school and migrant background.

Considering both domain-specific facets of academic self-concept, namely verbal self-concept and mathematical self-concept of 15-year-old immigrant students' in German Hauptschulen, Shajek, Lüdtke, and Stanat [8] revealed significantly lower verbal self-concepts but higher mathematical self-concepts for immigrants compared to nonimmigrants also when grades in German and in mathematics were considered. Given that immigrant students' grades were comparable to non-immigrants in mathematics but significantly worse in German, this complex pattern of findings was interpreted as evidence for the existence of the internal reference effect.

#### 2.2.4. Immigrant Students' Academic Self-Concept and Acculturation

There is some anecdotal evidence suggesting significant relationships between immigrant students' integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization, and their academic self-concept from the US context.

Investigating the relationship among acculturation, academic self-concept, and academic achievement in a sample of Latino community college students (*N* = 148), Hernandez [50] found that acculturation level, operationalized linearly on a continuum from very Mexican oriented to very Anglo oriented, moderated the association between academic self-concept and GPA, lowering the strength of academic self-concept in predicting GPA.

Further, a study on 200 Caribbean American adolescents lent some support to the hypothesis that immigrant students' acculturation relates to academic self-concept [51]. Correlational findings showed that as heritage and mainstream orientations, which were considered as two separate components of acculturation, increased, academic self-concept also increased. These positive correlations were interpreted as support for the notion that integration, where both heritage and mainstream orientation are strong, is related to more positive academic self-concepts, whereas marginalization, where heritage as well as mainstream orientation are weak, is associated with lower academic self-concept.

The only study we know of which considered integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization as distinct categories of individuals' acculturation orientation, was conducted in a sample of 97 Mexican-American students around the age of 15 years [52]. The analysis identified a significant difference in academic self-concept for integrated students in comparison to assimilated students. No significant difference was observed between integrated students' academic self-concept and students categorized as rejection (i.e., separation) and deculturated (i.e., marginalized). A serious limitation of this study, however, is that acculturation categories were operationalized based on a midpoint scale split technique, which led to disproportional distributions across categories (e.g., 73% were identified as integration and only 9% as assimilation). Also, confounding background characteristics such as gender or generational status were only considered regarding mean differences but not controlled for in the main analysis.

Though generalization and transferability of the findings from minority students in the US to immigrant students in Germany are limited, findings from these studies can be understood to confirm that "acculturation, which is an extremely important process for immigrant youths, plays a significant role in understanding academic self-concept in this population" (p. 120) [51]. Furthermore, the state of research is limited as academic self-concept was assessed on a global level rather than evaluating several facets of academic self-concept.

#### *2.3. Research Questions of the Present Study*

Taking up the notion that acculturation relates to immigrant students' academic selfconcept [6,8,52], which might be a possible explanation for immigrant students' (lack of) school success, this study examines possible associations between immigrant students' acculturation orientation and their academic self-concepts. For this purpose, a representative sample of ninth graders in Germany is investigated to examine whether immigrant students differ from non-immigrant students regarding their academic self-concepts depending on their acculturation profile. Doing so, general academic self-concept as well as subject-specific academic self-concepts are considered.

More specifically, this article examines the following research questions:

(1) What is the nature of general and domain-specific academic self-concepts of immigrant students depending on their acculturation profile in comparison to non-immigrant students?

(2) What are the relationships between general and domain-specific academic selfconcepts and grades in German and in mathematics in immigrant students depending on their acculturation profile?

(3) What are the relationships between immigrant students' acculturation profile and their general and domain-specific academic self-concepts when controlling for grades, students' gender, socio-economic background, and attended school track?

#### **3. Methods**

#### *3.1. Sample*

The empirical basis of the study is the data from the German National Educational Panels Study (NEPS), a longitudinal study on educational trajectories following a multicohort sequence design A detailed description of the panel study can be found in Blossfeld et al. [53]. The overall sample of ninth graders who took part in Starting Cohort 4 comprises 16,425 students. The data from 1186 students attending special schools were excluded for our analysis. The resulting analyses sample comprises *N* = 15,239 students (47.6% male, 47.3% female, 5.1% did not indicate their gender) who were approximately 15 years old (*M* = 14.73, *SD* = 0.72) at the time of the survey. The sample includes a total of *n* = 4070 students characterized as immigrant students in first, second, or third generation. The major immigrant groups were from Turkey (19.5%), the Former Soviet Union (17.0%), and Poland (10.8%).

#### *3.2. Measures*

#### 3.2.1. Acculturation Profiles

Within the NEPS, immigrant students were assessed with scales on feeling of belonging to the host society and the society of origin ("How much do you yourself identify with the people from Germany/this country overall?") and the feeling of connectedness (e.g., "I feel closely connected to the people from Germany/this country") [54], cultural habits, addressing e.g., listening to music, cooking, public holidays, and language use within the family. Based on these affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of acculturation, patterns of acculturation orientations were empirically identified conducting Latent Profile Analysis revealing four distinct profiles of acculturation. Following Berry's [7] theoretical model, profiles were interpreted as assimilated, integrated, separated, and indifferent (for a detailed description of the method and the resulting profiles please refer to Lilla et al., [21]; Thürer et al. [20]).

#### 3.2.2. Academic Self-Concepts

Different instruments were implemented measuring students' academic self- concepts [55]. Employing three short scales with three items each, the general dimension of academic self-concept along with subject-specific dimensions, i.e., verbal self-concept and mathematical self-concept, were administered (sample item general academic self-concept: "I learn quickly in most school subjects."; sample item domain specific self-concept: "I

get good grades in German [/mathematics].") [56]. For all items, answer options read 1 = 'does not apply at all', 2 = 'does rather not apply', 3 = 'does rather apply', and 4 = 'does completely apply'.

#### 3.2.3. Grades in German and Mathematics

Students' self-reported grades in German and mathematics from the most recent student report card ranging from 1 (*very good*) to 6 (*insufficient*) were administered. For our analysis, grades were recoded so that higher values indicate more favorable school outcomes.

#### 3.2.4. School Track

The German secondary school system provides different school tracks to which students are assigned to on the basis of prior achievement in primary school. Five school tracks distinguished in the NEPS were considered: Vocational school track (*Hauptschule*) offering the lowest school leaving certificate; intermediate school track (*Realschule*); academic track (*Gymnasium*) offering the highest school leaving certificate (Abitur) allowing students to attend university; as well as a comprehensive school track (*Gesamtschule*); and schools offering several tracks (*Schulen mit mehreren Bildungsgängen*).

#### 3.2.5. Control Variables

Students' gender and the highest value of parents' International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status (HISEI, [57]) as an indicator of students' socio-economic background were accounted for as relevant background characteristics.

#### *3.3. Statistical Analysis*

Prior to conducting the main analysis, latent profile analyses (LPA) were conducted using Mplus Version 8.2 [58]. All subsequent statistical analysis conducted to asses our research questions were performed using IBM SPSS 25. Following descriptive and correlational analysis, we performed a series of multiple regression analysis using three different scales measuring academic self-concept as dependent variables, i.e., general academic self-concept, verbal self-concept, and mathematical self-concept. Controlling for grades in German and mathematics (first step), immigrant students' acculturation profiles were included in a second step in the form of dummy-coded predictors with non-immigrant students as the reference group. Finally, students' gender, socio-economic background, and attended school track (as dummy-coded variables with the vocational track being the reference group) were included in a third step.

If immigrant students' acculturation profiles relate to their academic self-concepts, this would be indicated by significant coefficients for the corresponding acculturation profile. A positive coefficient would indicate that the self-concepts of immigrant students with the specific acculturation profile are more positive than non-immigrant students' self-concepts. Negative coefficients would indicate that that the self-concepts of immigrant students with the specific acculturation profile are less positive than non-immigrant students' self-concepts.

Missing values were imputed multiple times considering all variables contained in the analysis model. Coefficients presented below refer to the pooled dataset.

#### **4. Results**

#### *4.1. Characteristics of Non-Immigrant Students and Immigrant Students Depending on Their Acculturation Profile*

Table 1 gives an overview of the group characteristics of the non-immigrant students and immigrant students depending on their acculturation profile. ANOVAs conducted on general academic self-concept, verbal self-concept, mathematical self-concept, grades in German, and grades in mathematics yielded substantial differences between groups. To follow up on that, simple contrasts were conducted to obtain comparisons between

non-immigrant students and immigrant students with an assimilated, an integrated, a separated, and an indifferent acculturation profile, respectively.

There were no substantial differences in simple contrasts between assimilated immigrant students and non-immigrant students regarding general academic self-concept (*p* = 0.79), verbal self-concept (*p* = 0.91), and mathematical self-concept (*p* = 0.06). The same applied regarding grade in German (*p* = 0.69) and grade in mathematics (*p* = 0.17).

Contrasting the group of immigrant students with an integrated acculturation profile against non-immigrant students showed significant differences in general academic self-concept and verbal self-concept, which both were substantially lower for integrated students (*p*s < 0.001). Regarding mathematical self-concept, there was no significant difference (*p* = 0.87). Grades in German (*p* < 0.001) and in mathematics (*p* = 0.035) showed to be less favorable for the group of integrated students.

Contrasting the group of separated immigrant students to non-immigrant students revealed no substantial differences regarding general academic self-concept (*p* = 0.70) and verbal self-concept (*p* = 0.47), while mathematical self-concept was substantially lower (*p* = 0.015). At the same time, however, the separated immigrant students' grades in German and mathematics were significantly less favorable (*p* = 0.004 and *p* < 0.001) than for non-immigrant students.

Finally, direct comparisons of the group of indifferent immigrant students to nonimmigrant students showed no substantial difference in general academic self-concept (*p* = 0.12), while both verbal and mathematical self-concept showed to be significantly lower (*p* = 0.008 and *p* = 0.001), and grades in German and mathematics were substantially less favorable (*p*s < 0.001).

Regarding control variables, chi-square analysis showed that male and female students were unequally distributed across groups, χ<sup>2</sup> ((4, *N* = 15,545) = 13.72, *p* = 0.003). An ANOVA conducted on students' socio-economic background yielded significant differences and the same simple contrasts showed significantly lower levels of HISEI for immigrant students with integrated, separated, and indifferent acculturation profiles in comparison to nonimmigrant students (*p*s ≤ 0.001). Between the group of immigrant students with an assimilated acculturation profile and non-immigrant students, no significant difference existed (*p* = 0.84). Regarding school track, chi-square analysis showed unequal distribution across groups, except for the intermediate track (vocational track: χ<sup>2</sup> (4, *N* = 16,323) = 545.06, *p* < 0.001; intermediate track χ<sup>2</sup> (4, *N* = 16,323) = 9.25, *p* = 0.055; comprehensive schools: χ<sup>2</sup> (4, *N* = 16,323) = 214.93, *p* < 0.001; academic track: χ<sup>2</sup> (4, *N* = 16,323) = 312.01, *p* < 0.001).

Table 2 shows intercorrelations of all continuous variables. This shows a similar pattern for immigrant students and non-immigrant students. To follow up on that, the intercorrelations of self-concept scales and grades in German and mathematics were looked at depending on immigrant students' acculturation profile. Figure 1 shows intercorrelations of self-concept measures depending on immigrant students' acculturation profile without controlling for any background characteristics, possibly affecting the associations between academic self-concept facets and grades.




**Table 2.** Intercorrelations of the Variables of Interest for Non-Immigrant Students and Immigrant Students.


Note. Intercorrelations for immigrant students are presented above the diagonal, and intercorrelations for non-immigrant students are presented below the diagonal. \*\* *p* < 0.01, \*\*\* *p* < 0.001.

**Figure 1.** General Intercorrelations of Academic Self-Concept Measures and Grades depending on Immigrant Students' Acculturation Profile. *Note.* Numbers represent general intercorrelations for immigrant students with assimilated profile, integrated profile, separated profile, and indifferent profile; Bold numbers stand for significant intercorrelations (*p* < 0.01).

There is a strong positive correlation between grade in German and verbal self-concept for all acculturation profiles (*r*s ≥ 0.50), i.e., more favorable grades in German are associated with a more positive verbal self-concept and vice versa.

Grades in mathematics show to be even more strongly positively correlated with mathematical self-concept for all acculturation profiles (*r*s ≥ 0.62), i.e., more favorable grades in mathematics are associated with a more positive mathematical self-concept and vice versa.

Verbal self-concept and mathematical self-concept show to be differentially correlated depending on acculturation profile. While for the group of immigrant students' with an assimilated profile, there is no significant correlation, there are significant, however, weak, negative correlations between verbal and mathematical self-concept within the group of integrated, separated, and indifferent immigrants.

General academic self-concept shows to correlate moderately with both grade in German (*r*s ≥ 0.32) and grade in mathematics (*r*s ≥ 0.25), hence the correlations are less strong than the intercorrelations between grades and domain-specific self-concepts. Differences between immigrant students depend on their acculturation profile. Regarding the link between verbal self-concept and grade in German, intercorrelation was comparatively weaker for the group of indifferent immigrant students. Regarding the link between mathematical self-concept and grade in mathematics, intercorrelations were comparatively weaker for the group of separated and indifferent immigrant students.

General academic self-concept also showed to be correlated to both verbal and mathematical self-concept. General academic self-concept and verbal self-concept in general showed to be positive moderately related. Students with an integrated acculturation profile (*r* = 0.29, *p* < 0.01) were lower than for all other profiles (*r* ≥ 0.40, *p* < 0.01). Regarding the link between general academic self-concept and mathematical self-concept, intercorrelations were comparatively lower, especially for immigrant students with separated (*r* = 0.27, *p* < 0.01) or indifferent profile (*r* = 0.23, *p* < 0.01).

#### *4.2. Academic Self-Concepts of Immigrant Students as a Function of Their Acculturation Profile*

Table 3 shows the results of the multiple regression analysis predicting the different facets of academic self-concept depending on immigrant students' acculturation profile controlling for grades in German and mathematics, and additionally taking gender, HISEI, and school track into account.




33

For all dependent variables, the first step of the regression models shows strong positive effects of grade on the specific subject on domain-specific self-concept or grade in German and mathematics for the prediction of general academic self-concept.

In Model 1, predicting verbal self-concept, including acculturation profiles in the second step (Model 1b), shows a significant negative coefficient for integrated immigrant students and a significant positive coefficient for immigrant students with indifferent acculturation profiles. For assimilated and separated acculturation profile, no significant coefficient emerged. This pattern of findings remains stable also after including gender, HISEI, and school track in the third step (Model 1c).

In Model 2, predicting mathematical self-concept, including acculturation profile in the second step (Model 2b) shows a significant negative coefficient for the assimilated profile and significant positive profiles for integrated and indifferent profile. For separated acculturation profile, no significant coefficient emerged. Including gender, HISEI, and school track in the third step (Model 2c), the coefficient for the integrated acculturation profile no longer reached statistical significance.

In Model 3, predicting general academic self-concept, including acculturation profile in the second step (Model 3b), showed significant positive coefficients for separated and indifferent acculturation profiles. For assimilated and integrated acculturation profiles, coefficients were not statistically significant. Including gender, HISEI, and school track in the third step (Model 3c), the pattern of findings remained stable.

#### **5. Discussion**

Academic self-concept has proven to be a relevant factor for or against academic achievement [30,36]. Given that immigrant students perform more poorly, it is important to understand the factors that influence the academic self-concepts of immigrant students if their academic achievement is to be improved.

The German state of research on immigrant students' academic self-concept, however, is limited. Findings from singular studies revealed either more positive self-concepts for secondary immigrant students in comparison to non-immigrant students, e.g., more positive general academic self-concepts in Turkish immigrant students [33], or no differences in self-concept, e.g., regarding immigrant students' verbal self-concept [49], though immigrant students achieved significantly lower across studies. Only the study from Shajek and colleagues [8] showed more negative verbal self-concepts for students with non-German first languages, while their mathematical self-concepts were more positive in comparison to students speaking German in the family.

With the odds for academic performance not in favor for immigrant students and regarding the fact that academic self-concept is reciprocally related to academic achievement, this study aimed to contribute to this area of research by investigating academic self-aspects of ninth grade immigrant students. Furthermore, this study aimed to enhance the state of existing research as it investigated academic self-concept of immigrant students depending on their acculturation profile. To do so, relationships between both general and domain-specific facets were investigated.

Acculturation profiles were empirically identified in a prior study [20,21] following a latent profile approach in order to capture distinct profiles of acculturation without prior anticipation of acculturation patterns [23].

Descriptive findings revealed differences in grades for immigrant students with an integrated, separated, and indifferent acculturation profile, indicating that in comparison to non-immigrant students, they receive less positive performance feedback. However, for assimilated immigrant students, direct comparisons did not reveal any significant differences in grades. Though this applies to only 12% of students with an immigrant background in the sample, it questions the validity of generalized statements about immigrant students' academic underachievement. Furthermore, this finding is in line with findings from studies conducted in Germany on the relationships between immigrant students' acculturation and their academic achievement operationalized with standardized performance tests [17–20].

Following the notion of a reciprocal relation between academic achievement and academic self-concept, lower self-concepts could be expected for integrated, separated, and indifferent immigrant students. In direct comparison to non-immigrant students, in fact, integrated immigrant students were found to show lower levels of general academic self-concept and verbal self-concept, separated immigrant students showed lower levels in mathematical-self-concept, and indifferent immigrant students were found to exhibit lower levels in both domain-specific self-concept facets. No discrepancies were found for assimilated immigrant students' academic self-concept facets.

Intercorrelations between self-concept scales and grades showed the expected strong positive relationships between grades and self-concept scales with only slight variation in strengths depending on acculturation profile.

Though not in the focus of this study, the intercorrelations between verbal self-concept and mathematical self-concept showed an unexpected finding. For integrated, separated, and indifferent immigrant students, negative relationships emerged, though according to the internal/external frame of reference-model, domain-specific self-concepts are supposed to be uncorrelated [39], which was true for non-immigrant students and immigrant students with an assimilated profile in the sample. Future research on acculturation and self-concept should follow up on that interesting finding.

As it is hard to draw conclusions from studies on the relationships between acculturation and academic self-concept, which have not considered relevant background characteristics [50–52], we further investigated possible associations of academic self-concept with immigrant students' acculturation profile in a multivariate procedure. Doing so, our analysis at first sight showed a rather scattered pattern of findings depending on the predicted facets of academic self-concept. Taking a second look, however, reveals interesting patterns across self-concept facets: For assimilated immigrant students, the analysis conducted finds no significant difference in verbal self-concept in comparison to non-immigrant students, while mathematical self-concept is significantly lower. For integrated immigrant students, the opposite pattern, i.e., lower verbal-self-concept and even slightly more positive mathematical self-concept, can be found. These findings resemble the pattern of results from the study by Shajek and colleagues [8], testing the internal/external frame of reference in a sample of immigrant students, indicating the effect of dimensional comparisons. Interestingly, assimilated students seem to devaluate their mathematical self-concept while integrated students devaluate their verbal self-concept. Admittedly, though significant, the coefficients were rather small and need to be followed up by future research conducting path analysis to substantiate these findings. Neither assimilated nor integrated immigrant students differed regarding their level of general academic self-concept.

On the contrary, for separated immigrant students, no significant differences emerged regarding the domain-specific self-concept facets, but regarding general academic selfconcept, which showed to be more positive. Interestingly, indifferent immigrant students showed more positive verbal, mathematical, and general academic self-concepts than non-immigrant students, also when grades were controlled for and possible confounders considered. Trying to put some meaning into this finding, it is conceivable that these results indicate that indifferent students and maybe to some extent also separated immigrant students use other frames of reference and set comparison standards different from those applied by assimilated and integrated students. Whereas the latter two groups possible orient more toward native peers for social comparison, the former two groups possibly rather check their academic performance against significant others outside of the school context, maybe from the same ethnic group. All of these interpretations remain only tentative as long as there are no further studies to substantiate the empirical findings.

Discussing the results of our study, it must be borne in mind that the analysis is based on data that was collected in 2010/2011. Since that time, the immigrant situation in Germany has certainly changed, for instance due to immigration of refugees in the last decade. To what extent the acculturation profiles and their associations with different facets of academic self-concept differ today remains an open question at this point.

#### **6. Conclusions**

A positive self-concept is widely valued as a desirable outcome [3]. Hence, our findings raise the question whether the more positive academic self-concepts shown for indifferent students are a consequence of their acculturation profile, acting as a protective factor against negative feedback and making these immigrant students more resilient. On the other hand, our findings might as well be understood as a sign of disidentification with school [47].

As already mentioned, findings and their interpretations need to be treated with some respect, as coefficients were only small. Further research would be needed to follow up on the topic, for instance by applying path analytic approaches or structural equation modeling techniques. Incorporating longitudinal analysis would also help to investigate the reciprocal relationship within acculturation patterns more thoroughly. To gain more knowledge on possible comparison partners, future surveys may collect more data on the students' social environment or directly ask students for their social comparison partners, which could be compared between acculturation patterns. If further investigations show support for differential academic self-concepts depending on immigrant students' acculturation profile, teachers and other school personnel need to be informed about possibilities to promote the academic achievement of immigrant students, e.g., by interventions facilitating both the orientation toward the host culture and a positive academic self-concept.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, N.L.; methodology, N.L., W.N. and M.S.; formal analysis, N.L. and S.T.; writing—original draft, N.L.; writing—review & editing, N.L., S.T., W.N. and M.S.; project administration, N.L.; supervision, M.S.; funding acquisition, N.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—grant number: LI 3067-1/1. The publication of this article was funded by Freie Universität Berlin.

**Data Availability Statement:** Restrictions apply to the availability of these data. Access to the NEPS data requires the conclusion of a Data Use Agreement with the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi).

**Acknowledgments:** This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort Grade 9, doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC4:11.0.0. From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data was collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS has been carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


## *Article* **Educational Practices for Immigrant Children in Elementary Schools in Russia**

**Chulpan Gromova 1,\*, Rezeda Khairutdinova 1, Dina Birman <sup>2</sup> and Aydar Kalimullin <sup>1</sup>**


**Abstract:** Teachers have a pivotal role in the acculturation and adjustment of immigrant children. Practices are an important but an insufficiently explored part of teachers' work in a multicultural classroom. The purpose of the present research was to identify educational practices that elementary school teachers in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, use in their work with immigrant children to provide language and academic support and promote a welcoming atmosphere in the classroom that fosters psychological adjustment of the child. Data were collected through interviews with twenty elementary school teachers working with immigrant children. Interviews were analyzed using inductive and deductive content analysis methods. Findings suggest that in the absence of institutionalized structures, teachers take the initiative to adapt their teaching and instruction methods when working with immigrant children. Teachers primarily rely on individual (one-on-one) tutoring methods to provide language and academic support. Approaches to creating a favorable climate in the classroom and the child's psychological adjustment include practices of promoting respect for different ethnic groups and developing cross-cultural communication skills. Inclusion of parents in the educational process is used in conjunction with all practices with immigrant children used by teachers. In addition, teachers often rely on Tatar language as an intermediary between the migrant children's heritage language and Russian when communicating with them. Most children of immigrants are from Central Asian countries where the languages spoken are Turkic in origin and similar to Tatar—the indigenous language spoken in the Republic of Tatarstan.

**Keywords:** acculturation; adjustment; teachers' educational practices; immigrant children; language support; academic support; inclusion; welcoming school climate

#### **1. Introduction**

In the context of increasing globalization, migration, and resultant cultural diversity, the modern school plays an important role in addressing socio-cultural challenges faced by today's societies. The school is an important setting where acculturation and adjustment of immigrant children take place. In Russia, research and practice accounts suggest that schools are often poorly prepared to provide effective education to immigrant children [1,2].

Although migration to Russia is a relatively new phenomenon, Russia has one of the largest numbers of immigrants in the world. In 2017 it was the fourth largest destination country after the United States, Germany, and Saudi Arabia [3]. According to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs [4] the number of registered immigrants in Russia was 6,993,602 people in June 2018.

The largest migration flows into Russia are from Uzbekistan (3,446,849), Tajikistan (1,745,554), China (1,437,891), Ukraine (1,319,051), Kyrgyzstan (620,417), Kazakhstan (502,420), Azerbaijan (490,265), and Armenia (490,168). However, there are few statistical data regarding immigrant children in Russia. According to Russia's Committee for Education [5], immigrant students are concentrated in smaller schools (not more than

**Citation:** Gromova, C.; Khairutdinova, R.; Birman, D.; Kalimullin, A. Educational Practices for Immigrant Children in Elementary Schools in Russia. *Educ. Sci.* **2021**, *11*, 325. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/educsci11070325

Academic Editors: Gerald Griggs, Elena Makarova and Wassilis Kassis

Received: 28 April 2021 Accepted: 23 June 2021 Published: 30 June 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

400 students), while they comprise no more than 5% of students in larger schools. In a significant number of Russian schools, there are no immigrant children at all [1] (p. 15).

In accordance with Russian legislation, immigrant children are entitled to receive an education in any school in Russia. Chapter 1, Article 5 of the law on *Education in the Russian Federation* (2013) states:


However, the right to education applies only to legal residents. Foreign children are allowed to attend educational institutions in Russia only if they hold a residence permit [7]. According to the Russian Education Fund, about 80% of immigrant children do not attend kindergarten due to reluctance to register and a shortage of places [5]. Also, according to the same source, in 2014 every third immigrant child did not have access to education, an increase from 2011 when only every tenth child did not have that opportunity [5].

The presence of even a few first-generation immigrant children in school requires the provision of special supports and teaching approaches. Such approaches to developing a favorable environment for integration of immigrant children are referred to as multicultural, intercultural, or polycultural education [8–10]. Some scholars have described important differences between these approaches. In the United States some refer to intercultural education as teaching and learning about different cultures [11], whereas multicultural education is described as a political movement that stems from the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and aims to address inequities in education from a structural perspective [12]. However, Russia (and the USSR before it) has its own extensive history with respect to educating students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Valeeva and Valeeva (2016) use the term *intercultural* to describe these approaches in Russia and note their focus on intercultural communication, promoting tolerance and respect for different cultures, and teaching different languages, histories, and geographies for the purpose of "the enrichment of representatives of all cultural groups" [13] (p. 1569). While there are important differences, all of these approaches aim to foster mutual respect, understanding, and tolerance toward others [14–16].

Regardless of terminology and conceptual differences in approaches in different countries, teachers play a key role in integration of immigrant children in schools. Studies find that teachers are responsible not only for education but also for acculturation and developmental processes of immigrant children in schools [17–19].

Teaching practice, or pedagogy, has been defined as both an art of being a teacher, and a science of teaching. It generally includes strategies, styles, the context of instruction, and teachers' actions in the classroom [20]. Specific practices used for teaching immigrant children are closely related to addressing issues of acculturation. Previous studies elaborate on difficulties that immigrant children face in a new culture. These difficulties are related to learning a new language, a new culture, coping with migration trauma, adjusting to different school requirements, and academic standards in schools [21–25].

Educational practices used with immigrant children can be studied on the institutional, personal, and instructional levels [15,26]. Institutional level practices are implemented at the level of the whole school. Personal level practices include teachers' actions as a culturally responsive person. Instructional level includes teaching strategies and methods. While teachers do not directly influence educational policies, they are proactively involved in the educational process with immigrant children on all of these levels.

Dumcius et al. (2012) describe five models of educational support provided in different European countries: (1) non-systematic support, where the state does not adopt any systematic policies regarding education of immigrant children, leaving schools and teachers to initiate their own approaches; (2) compensatory support, that aims to help students catch up academically through teaching the host country language and providing interpretation services to parents; (3) an integration model where linguistic support stops after a few

years, no mother tongue teaching is provided, and intercultural learning is integrated into the curriculum; (4) a centralized entry support model where assessment and welcoming arrangements are centralized and linguistic and academic support are well developed; and (5) comprehensive support models that provide all four types of support. These support models differ from each other in who is responsible (national educational system or the local school) and in the extent to which they address four aims: linguistic support, academic support, parental and community involvement, and intercultural education, which is defined as ensuring a positive environment at school [27].

In the literature on school support for immigrant students, the first and most important aim is learning a new culture, which primarily involves learning a new language. Christensen and Stanat (2007) describe five types of language support provided to migrant children in different countries: (1) immersion—immigrant students are not provided with any language support and study in regular classes; (2) immersion with systematic support—immigrant students study in a regular class but they are provided with language support for a certain period of time; (3) immersion with a preparatory phase—immigrant students attend preparation courses before joining a regular class; (4) transitional bilingual immigrant children study in their native language before gradually moving to study in the language of the host country; and (5) maintenance bilingual—immigrant children learn in their native language as well as the language of the host country [28].

The bilingual approach, when students develop native language skills along with host country language skills, is considered to be effective [29–31]. However, as Christnsen and Stanat (2007) note, providing bilingual education may be unrealistic in some countries. They suggest that immersion with systematic language support or a preparatory phase may be effective practices [28]. Others have described specific approaches to teaching the language of the host country including speaking, writing, teamwork and discussions [32,33]. Here, teaching a host country language *as a second language* is considered to be the most successful strategy compared to traditional teaching methods used with native speakers [33–36].

The second aim of teachers' work is academic support, which is directed at reducing academic gaps. This is very important for immigrant children as without knowledge of the language of instruction they fall behind at school [37]. Insufficient knowledge of the language may occur not only in the first but also in the second generation of immigrants [28].

Third, research underscores the importance of promoting trusting relationships in the classroom so that immigrant children feel comfortable and included [38]. This means building good communication and collaboration in a class [39,40]. These three foci of teachers' work with immigrant students are explored in the present study.

#### *Purpose of the Study*

This research is based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, which considers learning and development as a culturally, historically, and socially mediated process [41]. The leading role in the child's education and development belongs to the adult—the teacher. Applying this theory to multicultural education, the teacher should possess the knowledge and practices to implement multicultural programs [42]. Multicultural practices are defined as collaborative actions of teachers and students [43].

The need for this study arose because of the lack of research about teachers' experiences in multicultural classrooms in Russia. Meanwhile, there is also the need for qualitative descriptive studies, which deepen understanding of how schoolteachers solve problems of integration of immigrant children [44,45]. In our previous quantitative study, we also concluded that qualitative research is needed to better understand the methods teachers use to teach immigrant children [37]. The aim of the present study is to identify and describe educational practices elementary school teachers in Tatarstan use with firstgeneration immigrant children. These children were brought to Tatarstan by their parents and came from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and other countries. Our study focuses on understanding how educators solve problems of integration of immigrant children

in Russia's schools. The study is intended to contribute to the literature on educational practices used by teachers when working with immigrant students.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

The study used an interpretive research paradigm and an exploratory qualitative design to describe teacher practices [40,46,47].

#### *2.1. Setting and Participants*

Participants of the study were teachers from different cities in Tatarstan. Tatarstan is an ethnically and religiously diverse region in Central Russia. According to the 2010 census, over 173 different ethnic groups live in the region. The eight largest groups (more than 10,000 people) are Tatars, ethnic Russians, Chuvash, Udmurts, Monrovians, Mari, Ukrainians, and Bashkir. The majority of the population in Tatarstan are Tatars, who are historically Muslim, and ethnic Russians, who are historically Orthodox Christians. Tatarstan has the sixth largest number of immigrants among Russia's regions. The overall number of registered immigrants in Tatarstan is 126,360 people, with the largest group being migrant laborers (36,631). As there are no statistical data on immigrant children, we asked teachers in the study about the number of immigrant children in their schools and classrooms.

Twenty elementary school teachers with experience of working with immigrant children agreed to take part in the study (see Table 1). We engaged in purposive sampling [46], selecting teachers in Tatarstan of any ethnicity who had experience working with immigrant students. Since no statistical information is available on enrollment of immigrant students in particular schools, we relied on local knowledge. Twelve teachers were recruited from professional development courses, which are mandatory every five years for all teachers in Russia. The courses were held in Kazan, with teachers from different cities in Tatarstan attending. During these courses teachers were invited to participate if they fit our inclusion criteria. Eight teachers were recruited from schools known to the researchers to have a large number of immigrant children. This information came from student teachers who were placed in these schools for their internships.

**Table 1.** Demographic information about the participants.


As shown in Table 1, participants had worked in elementary schools for an average of 22 years. All but one teacher were female. Ethnically, ten participants were Tatar, eight Russian, and one was Mordovian. In addition, one teacher had personal immigration experience as an immigrant from Kazakhstan. The majority of the teachers lived and worked in Kazan.

#### *2.2. Data Collection and Analysis*

Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews from December 2017 to June 2018. We initially asked whether teachers had any experience working with immigrant children. If they had such experience, we continued with the interview. Participants gave their consent to be interviewed and to have the interview recorded. They were assured that personal information (name, place of work) would be kept confidential.

To avoid leading the interviewees and impose researcher's views, and to reduce social desirability, participants were not fully informed about the specific focus of the research on teacher practices. As teachers often think that the quality of their work is being evaluated, we were concerned that they may report using teaching practices that they do not actually use. Rather, the aim of the interview was described in more general terms to learn about immigrant students in schools. The interview was prefaced with the researcher's statement: "We highly value your practical experience. It is very important to know the opinion of an experienced teacher about the difficulties you encounter when working with immigrant children. Please tell us about your experience of working with immigrant children". After teachers described where the children migrated from and what difficulties they faced, the interviewer asked them to describe how they worked with the children and solved problems. During interviews the teachers were encouraged to express themselves freely. However, the interviewer kept in mind the research questions, asking about topics listed in the interview guide. For example, if the teacher did not address a particular topic, the interviewer asked questions about it such as: "how do you help the student with learning the language?" To elicit more specifics, the interviewer asked follow-up questions such as "which problems in school do they face most often?" The teachers willingly talked about the children they work with, how they work with them, and what difficulties they experience.

The interviews lasted from 45 to 90 min and were subsequently transcribed. The transcripts were read several times to get a general sense of the participants' feelings and perceptions, and discussed by the research team. In every transcript we identified quotations that had certain practice-related phrases or statements and highlighted them with a marker. In all, we identified 180 quotations and sorted them into categories as described below.

The quotes were analyzed deductively and inductively. All codes were reviewed by members of the research team who reached consensus about the final categories. The deductive approach was based on the classification of practices/supports suggested by Dumcius et al. (2012): linguistic support, academic support, parental inclusion, and intercultural education and positive school climate [27]. We decided not to use "parental inclusion" as a separate category because during the coding process we realized that working with parents was done in the service of all other practices, including language support, academic support, and creating a positive school climate. Through an inductive approach we identified specific practices that teachers use in their work in the service of these aims.

#### **3. Results**

#### *3.1. Language Support*

In 75 quotations, teachers talked about methods for teaching the Russian language and improving children's language skills. Only one teacher mentioned that their school organizes special Russian courses for immigrant children. All other teachers reported that language support is provided individually as additional help by themselves or by outside tutors. For example, these teachers describe how language support is provided during after-school activities:

Interview 16: "*We stayed after the class. I explained what she didn't understand in words and using gestures. During the after-class activities we repeated everything we learned in class, in every subject. I explained all the topics again. We wrote dictations, keywords, small essays. Sometimes parents hire a tutor for additional classes*".

Interview 14: "*The tutor is concerned with the main [Russian] language; they mostly try to identify the knowledge gap and work on it. They read the tasks; try to understand what the student didn't get*".

One teacher (Interview 16) said that such an approach is effective in this quote: "*And this kind of individual work produced results*".

Teachers also mentioned that children learn the language faster through daily communication and TV than they do in school:

Interview 6: "*I had one who didn't know the language. He spent a whole year in pre-school, we both struggled; he didn't know anything at all. His brother sat with him, explained and showed him; he cried. And during the summer, just in three months, he*

*learned to talk. He spent the whole summer on the street with kids and after that he started talking. He understood what we talked about*".

As for the content of additional lessons, teachers mostly said that they work with immigrant children on study materials orally and in writing. Students read, retell, and learn rhymes by heart. Work on literary texts includes explaining the meaning of unknown words, picking synonyms for words, especially proverbs and sayings so that the child would not just read, but also understand what they are reading:

Interview 12: "*We work on texts during after-class hours, reading. We ask them to retell in order to develop their speech* ... *We write dictations because it helps to remember*".

Interview 15: "*I had to explain some words, mostly when we worked on vocabulary. Sometimes I have to explain Russian proverbs and sayings, of course, this is during individual work*".

Interview 14: "*Right now we are working only on dialogues, so he could communicate and express his ideas*".

Among communicative language training techniques, teachers most often singled out communication with peers and teachers. Many teachers pointed out that children learned the language faster through communication and games. Their vocabulary grew because they learned new words and repeated after their peers. Hence, many educators tried to create conditions for children to communicate more during after-school activities, school camps, additional classes, stage plays, and social clubs as described by this teacher in Interview 14: "*I organized group work so that they could talk more and help each other. Then, a preschool camp* ... *to communicate with children and teachers*".

Teachers also asked other immigrant children to help those who struggle with the language. This teacher explained (Interview 8): "*The kids who more or less understand Russian try to translate. They explain through gestures, pictures, put it in simpler words*".

Meanwhile, Tatar language knowledge helped teachers communicate with and explain to immigrant children whose knowledge of Russian is poor. Tatar language belongs to the Turkic language group, so it is similar to the native languages of children from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. These teachers explained:

Interview 19: "*They can communicate through the Tatar language. Through Tatar language teachers communicate easier with them, they also translate what we don't understand. The Turkic languages are similar*".

Interview 5: "*Tatars and other pupils compare similar words in the classroom, it's interesting. There are similar words in the Kazakh and Uzbek languages*".

Interview 17: "*No, they're the same Russian language teachers but they're ethnic Tatars and know Tatar well. And it's simpler for them to communicate with these students because they speak mostly Turkic languages. So, they are teaching Russian through Tatar*".

Only one teacher stated that their school provides immigrant children with special Russian language courses. Many other teachers believed such courses should exist, but they did not specify what should be taught or which teaching methods should be used. One teacher commented (Interview 15): *"More focus on the Russian language [is needed]. They won't learn the material without knowing Russian. Of course, we have the after-school [Russian language] class but it's for everyone. We need a special one for these children".* Only one teacher mentioned that a particular teaching method would be the most appropriate—teaching Russian as a foreign language.

Teachers attributed children's poor language skills mostly to low language skills of their parents. As a result, we focused some analyses on identifying language teaching practices that involve parents. Teachers talked about the need to work with parents, to explain to parents that they needed to convince their children of the necessity to learn the Russian language even if that meant placing the child in a lower grade. For example, in response to the question "what should be done to teach children the Russian language?" these teachers said:

Interview 12: "*I don't even know. Knowing the [Russian] language so parents can explain to the child. Talking to parents that it's necessary to study, that they also should put in some effort*".

Interview 4: "*And I think that if an immigrant comes to school, we shouldn't put them in a grade according to their age, maybe to a lower grade, but you have to explain this to parents*".

In one interview the teacher said that a parent came to class herself to learn the language (Interview 5)*: "The child's mom brought a translator with her and studied in the back of the class".* In other cases, teachers recommended Russian language courses to parents, as in Interview 12: *"Maybe [it's necessary to] teach parents, maybe after-class courses for parents, so parents can attend them with kids".*

#### *3.2. Academic Support*

Academic support refers to teaching practices designed to improve or support children's academic performance (36 quotes). As with language support, teachers worked with children individually or suggested that parents hire tutors. Teachers provided additional explanations and lessons after school or during vacations.

Interview 3: "*We explain it to someone individually. I can't do it when the whole class is present*".

Interview 4: "*Yes, [I provide] additional explanation after classes, but sometimes they stay in the after-school clubs. They study there*".

Interview 19: "*We do homework with them during the after-school hours, I help them. Next day it's like starting from a scratch. As our psychologist said, "don't be lazy". And it goes on and on day after day*".

Interview 18: "*When I don't have a preschool camp, I invite them during summer and winter holidays for 2–3 hours*".

However, two teachers said that additional classes and tasks are not necessary in Interview 2: *"There is no need to give them additional tasks"* and Interview 6: *"It is pointless to keep them after classes".* Some students had outside tutors who helped them with schoolwork, as explained in Interview 12: *"But some girls now have tutors, twice a week, they do homework with them".*

During class teachers explained the material in a simplified way, through visual aids, examples, actions or repeated the same material if needed. For example:

Interview 9: "*While explaining the topic I used graphics because children remember things better visually. They won't understand everything orally. If, let's say, it's related to math. One time a child didn't know the multiplication table. We did operations with numbers* ... *All children understand numbers; they're the same in all languages. So, I used graphics*".

Interview 11: "*I pulled out my wallet and the coins, we added like that. They understood with coins, but on the blackboard—no way*".

Interview 8: "*I have to explain it on fingers and with pictures*".

In some cases, teachers were able to explain only with the help of another child who acted as a mediator. A peer mediator could be an immigrant or a non-immigrant child, who could explain the academic material using simpler language. For example:

Interview 9: "*I asked other children to explain, to try to explain it. Children understand each other better. They talk differently, not using smart phrases like us. I asked classmates to explain it to them on their own*".

Interview 6: "*I try to put well-performing and poorly performing students in pairs, because children can explain to each other better*".

Interview 19: "*When children got older, in third - fourth grades I started using the help of assistants. Assistants are well-performing classmates. And well-performing immigrant children also became assistants, they helped too*".

Teachers also engaged parents to improve students' academic performance. Teachers explained to parents that it is important for their children to study; and explained teaching materials so parents can explain them to their children.

Interview 10: "*If I call him [parent], he comes, and I explain. The dad would often make a brief visit after the work*".

Interview 16: "*And then I gave advice to the parents on how to work with children at home. I called them every day and explained everything. What we do in class, what we do after class and what should be improved at home*".

Interview 9: "*I talked about the importance of education at the teacher-parent meeting*".

Children worked on their homework with parents. At the same time some parents were not able to help their children with homework because of poor Russian language skills or low educational level.

Teachers also tried to use an individualized approach with children, adapting tasks according to the child's abilities. For example:

Interview 18: "*I almost never give them tricky tasks as homework, except maybe the simplest ones. It would be better at least if they could cope with the basic part of the curriculum. Simplified homework* ... *For example, if Russians have to retell the whole text, I give them only a part of it*".

Interview 2: "*If I'm asking to recite a poem, I do not ask them on that day. I know it will be difficult for them*".

Teachers also adjusted their grading with immigrant students and gave them better grades if they saw a benefit in doing so. Usually, teachers did this to encourage and motivate the children. For example:

Interview 18: "*But I also tried to give better marks to motivate the child. I used to give 4 s for a dictation [equivalent of a B letter grade], even if there were 40 mistakes. I invented my own mark, pointed out typical mistakes and grouped them*".

Interview 3: "*But we make some excuses for them, of course. It's a must. If we give someone else a 3 [equivalent of a C letter grade] for that number of mistakes, we can give a 4 here. It's an encouragement*".

One teacher just gave students a 3 [equivalent to a C] regardless of children's effort and improvement (Interview 4): "*Yeah, I'm just giving them 3 s. In Math, Tatar, and English they deserve it but in Russian-no*".

#### *3.3. Promoting a Positive School Climate to Foster the Child's Psychological Adjustment in the Classroom*

To create a positive and welcoming climate at school, teachers described teaching respect toward different ethnicities and developing cross-cultural communication skills (69 quotations). These practices sometimes coincided. For example, one teacher reported that she initiated a special club where children of different ethnicities can communicate. The teacher invited children of different nationalities, including immigrants, to join a club to create a positive intercultural climate:

Interview 5: "*Our school has a social club called "Friendly Family". It's my personal initiative. A community organization [outside the school] provides additional money. Children of different nationalities join the club. We get together once a month or once*

*a week. We discuss world news, or we have kids who come up with something in their language and tell us. We try to attract kids who don't speak [Russian] well, too*".

In addition, teachers employed practices for promoting a generally positive socialpsychological climate in the classroom, not specific to issues of cultural diversity. For example:

Interview 14: "*I put children in contact with each other so they could talk more and help each other*".

Interview 19: "*And we give them tasks. For example, we ask them to give out notebooks, collect notebooks. It may be a small task but it's still communication. I do everything to get them involved*".

To teach respect toward different ethnicities and create a culture of international communication, schools organized national celebrations. These festivals give immigrant children opportunities to recite poems, dance their national dances, sing national songs, and serve national dishes. For example:

Interview 19: "*Four times a year we organize a festival of different peoples where immigrant children represent their countries. Such events improve attitudes toward them. They wear their national costumes, read and sing in their languages, perform national dances*".

Interview 5: "*I held an annual festival called 'Me, you, he and she are a friendly family'. We prepared for it for a year. I invited a Tajik boy who recited a poem, and a Tajik girl who danced in a long dress. There were an Uzbek girl and a boy. They performed an Azerbaijanian dance. There were national dishes of all sorts. A Georgian girl performed a Georgian dance, it was very melodic. We served the food and let everyone try*".

Parents were also involved in the process of intercultural dialogue. For example, one teacher mentioned that native and immigrant parents taught children different cuisines, traditions, and customs. One teacher said:

Interview 5: "*We visited a Russian family during Easter, painted eggs and recorded it in on a camera. They told us about the origins of that holiday. Once an Azerbaijanian mom came and taught children how to make cookies. She brought the dough and explained how it's served*".

In two interviews, teachers talked about the help that ethnic Diasporas in Kazan provide in teaching children about different cultures. They also helped resolve conflicts.

Interview 5: "*They have Sunday schools [in the Center of Ethnic Friendship]. They gather there, many attend it. We have relationships with them, and they always invite me with the children. I can take any class and go there. Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis. They perform at festivals, organize workshops and open classes. Sometimes they visit us, too*".

Interview 17: "*Our school works together with the Center of Ethnic Friendship. We know each other and work with leaders of all Diasporas. Together we solve conflicts that could arise with some children's parents*".

Teachers held discussions with entire classes as well as with the immigrant children as another practice in the service of developing a positive climate. Discussions with the entire class were done to prevent discrimination against immigrant children.

Interview 3: "*I never allow children to bully kids of different ethnicities*".

Interview 20: "*A boy [name], he's slightly darker than other kids* ... *He was insulted*".

Interviewer: "*What did you do with this?*"

Teacher: "*I discussed it during the class meetings. I had very few kids. It is convenient. It was in Tatar language class*".

Teachers explained to all children that they should help and support each other.

Interview 8: "*Of course, we tell children to support each other, so other children could help him, make friends, communicate so he could help you, so you can collaborate. And children are trying to support them. I let them know that they should support him*".

Teachers explain the principles of mutual respect and intercultural communication.

Interview 19: "*It's all different for everyone. From the very first grade I explain to children and their parents that we all should live in friendship and agreement regardless of what nationality you are. I support tolerance and encourage our kids. I explain how hard it can be for migrant children*".

Teachers held individual talks with immigrant children to address their aggressive behavior, explaining to them that they should be friendlier. For example, in Interview 19 the teacher said: "*I explain to them that they shouldn't get upset. Of course, it's difficult*". Conflicts were also a reason to have discussions. In one interview the teacher said that she talked not only to students but also to parents to solve a conflict between children.

Interview 13: "*Well, we talked, solved these conflicts. I called the parents, talked to the dads and the boys. We talked so they could feel comfortable in the classroom, to change their opinions somehow. The dads sat across from each other, Azerbaijanian and Tatar. I told them that if we can't find common ground between them, it would be impossible for their kids to study together*".

Only in one interview (Interview 16) a teacher mentioned the help provided by a school psychologist when a child experienced problems communicating with other children: "*Well, we have a psychologist. She came up in the first class when one girl had problems with other children* ... *She worked with her individually*". Teachers lamented a lack of such specialists who could help them in schools, as in Interview 6: "*There should be a school psychologist. There should be specialists in a school*".

#### **4. Discussion and Conclusions**

Our study findings are that teachers in Russia had to use additional individual lessons with immigrant children to teach them Russian and help them improve their academic performance. On the one hand, this is similar to what happens in other countries without centralized models of transitional practices for immigrants [27,48]. On the other hand, giving immigrant students one-on-one attention is considered a very effective practice to help newcomer children adapt to a new school [31,38]. During additional lessons, teachers in our study explained academic material one more time or worked with texts, though without using special methods for teaching Russian as a foreign language. This is despite the fact that special instructional methods for teaching Russian as a second language have been developed by Russian educators [34,35,49–51]. Similar to Gorpas (2011), teachers in our study believed in the necessity of teaching Russian language to students, but only one of them was even aware of methods for teaching Russian as a foreign language [48]. Some teachers admitted that they need to learn about teaching methods, special books, and guidelines for teaching immigrant students. These finding underscore the need for teacher education programs to include training on teaching culturally diverse and multilingual students in todays' increasingly diverse classrooms.

One individualized approach with immigrant children is when teachers give them easier assignments and use different grading criteria. Teachers in our study tried to support children's tiniest achievements by giving them more accessible tasks, tailored to their abilities. Previous studies have also suggested the importance of initial assessment and monitoring of the child's progress [31,37]. On one hand, some researchers consider such practices to reflect low expectations, which lead to low performance [52,53]. On the other, immigrant children cannot cope with difficult assignments when their knowledge of the language of instruction is poor. Our research also suggests the necessity of developing and implementing initial assessments to determine the level of students' knowledge and skills

when they enter the school. This would assist teachers in developing appropriate practices for incoming students. Monitoring students' achievements and academic progress at the state level can avoid grade inflation and manage teachers' low expectations. This presents an additional challenge for schoolteachers.

The role of the mediator between newly arrived immigrant children and their parents and the school was played by children and teachers who knew the Tatar language. This finding supports results of previous studies that found teaching a new language with the support of the native language to be one of most effective strategies. While the Tatar language is not native to immigrant children, it is closely related to the native language of many Turkic peoples who move to Russia and Tatarstan. As in prior research, without formal language support, teachers in our study relied on assistants [37], mentors [14,54], or translators who are usually other immigrant children [37,55]. This teaching practice aids communication between peers and teachers and can help prevent segregation from a Russian-speaking environment [14,37,45]. In our study, teachers reported asking peers to speak Russian to the students not only to help them learn the language but also to explain lesson material in plain language. This method is an important part of cooperative learning and translanguaging [30,56]. However, it was hard to discern from our interviews whether teachers used this measure intentionally or were forced to do so without institutional support, as all support provided to migrant children stemmed from the teachers' personal initiative.

With respect to ways of promoting positive climate in the classroom to foster psychological comfort for children, our study findings resonate with two approaches recommended in schools with immigrant students. The first is creating an environment that encourages communication among children and the second is promoting respect for cultural diversity [55,57,58]. Although learning about different cultures in school has been criticized as "touristic" [59] (p. 57), nonetheless, all children benefit from learning more about their own and other cultures [15,60–62]. As described in prior research, teachers in our study described holding discussions with immigrant children and other students to reduce tensions, solve conflicts and encourage collaboration with parents [63]. In addition to previous studies, we found that relying on ethnic diasporas may be good practice to aid in acculturation of immigrant children and solving conflicts with their parents.

The main finding in our study was that without systematic, centralized support [64] or specialized training, teachers had to take the initiative and create personalized approaches when working with immigrant children. Although the data were initially analyzed deductively based on the literature, using an inductive approach we discovered a variety of practices that teachers implemented to support immigrant students. In addition, inductive analyses led us to conclude that parental inclusion can be used as a component of the three categories of practices examined: academic support, language support, and promotion of a positive climate in the classroom. Finally, because the Tatar language is closely related to languages of other Turkic peoples, our study points to advantages of using it in Tatarstan to support teaching Russian as a foreign language.

#### **5. Limitations**

While use of qualitative methodology allowed us to discover teaching practices with immigrant children in Tatarstan, a limitation of the study is that it relied on the authors' interpretation of teachers' subjective reports regarding their teaching and issues that immigrant children face in the classroom. Although the interviews were valuable in understanding the teachers' experience, thoughts, and feelings from their perspective, this line of research can be complemented by observational studies of teachers' practice. Further, only quantitative research can document how frequently the teachers use the kinds of supporting strategies and teaching practices when working with immigrant children in Russia and Tatarstan. In addition, most teachers who took part in the study were female. This is due to the fact that the teaching profession is still predominantly female in Russia. Finally, teacher practices reflect beliefs and ideologies about educating diverse

students. The question of how multicultural education is conceptualized in Russia, and whether foreign concepts of multiculturalism, interculturalism, or polyculturalism apply was beyond the scope of the present study but is important to investigate in future research.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.G.; Investigation, R.K.; Methodology, D.B.; Project administration, A.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The study was conducted accordance with guidelines of Helsinki declaration and regulations of Kazan Federal University for minimal risk research.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** This paper has been supported by the Kazan Federal Strategic Academic Leadership program.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

**Disclosure Statement:** No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

#### **References**

