Learning a New Land

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Learning a New Land

• Anth/Soci/Psyc 193 Case Study of a Behavioral
  Science Approach

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Multidisciplinary from the start

• We believe that to understand fully the
  reality of another, we must first examine the
  interplay of that individuals disposition,
  social worlds, and economic contexts.
• P. 28-29

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The team

• Carola Suarez-Orozco cultural psychology
• Marcelo Suarez-Orozco psychological anthropology
• Irina Todorova cultural health psychologist
• Bilingual research assistants

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Key Methodologies LISA Longitudinal Immigrant
Student Adaptation Study

• Clearly distinguish immigrant students from
  children of immigrant parents
• Focus on theoretically interesting populations
  with distinct immigration and cultural profiles
• Tracked students and reanalyzed as their
  experiences distinguished them

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Establishing Social Facts

• National statistical analysis
• Sophisticated statistical analyses of stakeholder
  social facts (mothers education, district test
  scores, poverty rates)

• Comparative analysis by countries of origin as
  one filter
• Comparative analysis by region as another
• Educational Outcome Data creating new categories
  for comparison

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Students Psyches

• Taking a developmental perspective
• Focus on learning
• Documenting mental health

• Projective tests, such as the Thematic
  Apperception Test
• Educational Outcome Data creating new categories
  for comparison

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Situated Learning

• Deep ethnographic interviewing and observation
•  Tracking relationships
• Articulating cultural values

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Blending

• Triangulate data to provide rigor
• Create Immigrant Youth Portraits, creating case
  studies

• Establish social facts and humanize with stories

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Synthesis

• Ecological approach examines different actors and
  gets their perspectives
• Analysis scales from individual experience to
  social facts of school districts and national
  statistics on immigration
• Findings (reliable statistical renditions of
  central tendencies) blend with stories,
  translating the valid experience of people
• More nuanced categories are useddeclining
  achievers, low achievers, improvers and high
  achievers
• Can make stronger policy recommendations since
  hidden ecological factors are included as well as
  statistical analysis