The Perceptions of High School Students from Refugee, Immigrant, and Visiting Professional Families about Their School Experiences in Pittsburgh.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This phenomenological investigation examined how high school students from refugee, immigrant, and visiting professional families perceived their schooling experiences in Pittsburgh. For more than 4.8 million (9.5%) students in the United States, English is not the language that they speak, read, or write. This statistic does not include the many students who were born abroad, have learned English, but stand out among their American classmates because they remain ethnically and culturally diverse. This study had two main foci. The first was to understand these students’ lived experiences from their own perspectives with an emphasis on their interpretations of the school contexts in which they participated. The second was on how the conceptual perspectives of family literacy, funds of knowledge, third space, and translanguaging provided frameworks for analyzing and contextualizing students’ perceptions. Seven high school students, who attended four public schools in Pittsburgh, were involved in three in-depth phenomenological interviews and ongoing two-way text conversations during a six-week period. Using these data, I created portraits of each student, foregrounding their voices and experiences while also integrating my own observations. I present suggestions for the educational community to consider in order to address some of the difficult issues and obstacles these students identified. By creating awareness of these, I anticipate that some solutions might be developed and then implemented. If this occurs, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students might feel that their needs are recognized, discover that they are valued by their school community, and also achieve academic success.