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Immigration and Diversity: Exploring Immigrant Parents’ Contributions to Teacher Education

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Migration in China and Asia

Part of the book series: International Perspectives on Migration ((IPMI,volume 10))

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Abstract

The knowledge immigrant parents hold about their children is often unrecognized by Canadian educational systems. Parent knowledge has vital implications for Canadian school systems and for teacher preparation. Based on interviews of parents from 15 countries, this study presented three types of parent knowledge: First language, cultural and religious knowledge. Then, parent knowledge was shared with a group of pre-service teachers. Results reveal some pre-service teachers encouraged the use of students’ first language in their practicum whereas others internalized their monolingual ideology despite multilingual realities. They recognized cultural misunderstanding between immigrant parents and Canadian teachers and systemic racism, and questioned the feasibility of accommodating everyone’s religious needs. The study suggests that it is important to help pre-service teachers shift their representation of multilingualism from being a problem to a resource, understand immigrant students’ cultural backgrounds, and address religious-based exemptions and accommodation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Roman Catholic schools in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories along with other religiously based schools receive public funding in many provinces.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

    Yan Guo

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  1. Yan Guo
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Correspondence to Yan Guo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, Hainan, China

    Jijiao Zhang

  2. Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Howard Duncan

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Guo, Y. (2014). Immigration and Diversity: Exploring Immigrant Parents’ Contributions to Teacher Education. In: Zhang, J., Duncan, H. (eds) Migration in China and Asia. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8759-8_9

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