Educational practices for immigrant children in elementary schools in Russia

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.