Communication and Group Work in the Multicultural Classroom: Immigrant Students’ Experiences

Publisher's version (útgefin grein) The paper is part of the qualitative research project Educational Aspirations, Opportunities and Challenges for Immigrants in University Education in Iceland, conducted in Iceland’s three biggest universities. The main goal of the paper is to investigate immi...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:European Journal of Educational Research
Main Authors: Benediktsson, Artem Ingmar, Ragnarsdottir, Hanna
Other Authors: Menntavísindasvið (HÍ), School of Education (UI), Háskóli Íslands, University of Iceland
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Eurasian Society of Educational Research 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/1968
https://doi.org/10.12973/eu-jer.8.2.453
Description
Summary:Publisher's version (útgefin grein) The paper is part of the qualitative research project Educational Aspirations, Opportunities and Challenges for Immigrants in University Education in Iceland, conducted in Iceland’s three biggest universities. The main goal of the paper is to investigate immigrant students’ experiences of communication with teachers during the learning process and their perspectives on multicultural group work. Furthermore, the paper explores immigrant students’ experiences of learner-centred approach and culturally responsive teaching methods applied by some teachers. The data was collected through focus group interviews and qualitative, semi-structured individual interviews with immigrant students. The theoretical framework is mainly based on the constructivist theory, which emphasises the importance of communication and the learner-centred approach. Additionally, the theoretical framework includes multicultural education theory, which puts an emphasis on applying culturally responsive teaching methods in classrooms with diverse student populations. The analysis of the interviews revealed that the participants’ experiences of communication with teachers and peers were mostly positive. However, culturally responsive teaching is still a rare phenomenon in Icelandic universities. When it comes to the participants’ perspectives on group work, the experiences ranged from being highly positive to negative. The presented paper is based on the results from the first, extensive qualitative research project titled Educational Aspirations, Opportunities and Challenges for Immigrants in University Education in Iceland conducted from 6 to 8 in Iceland’s three biggest universities. The project was funded by the Icelandic Research Fund (Rannís). (163516-052) Peer Reviewed