Teachers for Immigrant Students: A Systematic Literature Review Across Hong Kong, Turkey, and the United States

Abstract

Background: Diversity across the world is changing, given the growing number of immigrant children in schools. These increases in transnational mobility have teachers struggling to reconsider their everyday practices to accommodate many more newcomers in their classrooms. The need for teachers to become more responsive to changing social conditions and student populations is gaining urgency. Purpose: Our purpose in this study is to gain insight into what the literature says about educating immigrant children through the lens of social justice in Turkey, the United States, and Hong Kong, as each context presents a distinct case of immigration. Research Design: We conduct a systematic literature review on 87 articles, selected from teaching and teacher education journals. In light of documented inequities experienced by immigrant children, we conduct our review within a framework of teaching immigrant students globally within, versus parallel to, the field of teaching for social justice. Findings: Through cross-jurisdiction inquiry, our findings reveal both examples and counterexamples of teaching for social justice, categorized into three cross-cutting themes: (a) Ways of Teaching, (b) Ways of Knowing, and (c) Ways of Seeing. Among the literature, we found a significant focus on language acquisition in the teaching of immigrant students. Another pattern was the ways in which teachers and teacher education value (or not) immigrant students’ funds of knowledge by building on (or rejecting) what students and their communities bring to their learning. Finally, our review demonstrated how teacher educators and teachers encourage, challenge, and teach preservice teachers and students to work against institutional and societal structures that are oppressive for immigrant students. Conclusion: The global reality of superdiversity among immigrant students calls on teachers to be pedagogically adept to respect and support multiple ways of teaching, knowing, and seeing. Research on social justice education for immigrants needs to move beyond language acquisition/deficit as the primary lens for analysis to consider the assets that immigrants bring to classrooms. Despite the differences in the experiences of (im)migrant students in each of the national contexts, social justice must be embedded in teacher education to ensure inclusive and culturally responsive teaching for all.