Metropolis - Toronto Centre of Excellence

1997 RFP FUNDED RESEARCH PROJECTS

A. Economic Domain

1. Changing Patterns of Immigrants’ Socioeconomic Integration (1986-1995) and their Policy Program Implications

Research team (lead researcher, partners):

Edward Harvey, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Bobby Siu, COSTI Immigrant Services.

Start date: September 1997

Date of completion: September 1998

Amount awarded from CERIS: $15,000

Abstract:

This study examines, for the period 1986 to 1995, the changing patterns of immigrants’ socioeconomic integration. Over 50 ethno-cultural groups are compared to one another and the national average (for Canada and the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area) on a number of dimensions including employment income, the unemployment and labour force participation rates, and the proportion of persons in each group falling below Statistics Canada’s low income cut-off measure. These patterns are further analysed using such variables as sex, education, language and period of immigration. The program and policy implications of the results are also examined.

Outcomes/results obtained:

In the 1997-98 funding year, CERIS supported the above referenced project. Edward B. Harvey was lead investigator and was assisted by Kathleen D. V. Reil and Bobby Siu. COSTI was the community partner.

CERIS support enabled us to obtain from Statistics Canada a special tabulation of 1991 Census Canada data which showed the socioeconomic situation for 58 ethnocultural groups at the Canada, Ontario, Toronto CMA and Vancouver CMA levels of geography. The socioeconomic situation dimensions included employment income, unemployment and incidence of low income as measured by Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-off (LICO). The data in the special tabulation also enabled us to control for gender, and in the case of immigrants to Canada, to control for period of immigration.

In addition to the special tabulation of 1991 Census data, we also examined data from: (1) a wide range of Canadian Studies of ethnocultural groups and immigrants, and (2) the International Migration Data Base ( IMDB) maintained by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

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The statistical data used in the study was augmented by three focus groups organized by COSTI and conducted by Edward B. Harvey and Kathleen Reil in June 1998. Thirty-five subjects participated in the three focus groups and were selected by COSTI to be broadly representative of a range of ethnocultural groups and immigrants at different stages of the adaptation process.

The study also made use of 1986 Census data in 46 different ethnocultural groups common to both the 1986 and 1991 Census data. As in the special tabulation of the 1991 Census data, the 1986 data also contained information on socioeconomic situation (employment income, unemployment and incidence of low income), gender and period of immigration. The 1986 data, however, are only for the Canada level of geography.

Nature of research collaboration:

The partnership with COSTI was, and continues to be, excellent. Mario Calla, Executive Director of COSTI, assisted us throughout the project and set up the focus groups at COSTI. For our part, we have provided him with all research outputs and have ongoing discussions about the program/policy implications of our results.

Contribution to training and/or professional development:

Kathleen Reil received training in the management and analysis of largescale public datasets, has developed a strong background in the research literature relating to immigration and ethnocultural studies, and is participating as co-author in all the refereed papers being produced

(2 to date, 2 more planned.)

Policy implications of work & dissemination:

Several outputs from the study have been produced or are in the process of being produced. The outputs (completed and in process) are as follows:

(1) Edward Harvey and Kathleen Reil have completed and submitted to the Canadian Journal of Ethnic Studies a paper entitled “Poverty and Unemployment Patterns Among Ethnocultural Groups.” The paper compares, for Canada in 1986 and 1991, the socioeconomic situation for 46 different ethnocultural groups, including a wide range of visible racial ethnocultural groups as well as non-visible racial ethnocultural groups. The socioeconomic situation measures used are unemployment and poverty (as measured by Statistics Canada’s low income cut-off measure). Three main conclusions emerged from the analysis:

· When 1986 and 1991 data are compared, twice as many ethnocultural groups have higher unemployment rates in 1991. In 1986, 46 percent of the 46 ethnocultural groups had unemployment rates higher than the national average. In 1991, 76 percent of the 46 ethnocultural groups (35 groups) had unemployment rates higher than the national average.

· Although the overall national poverty level decreased in 1991 compared with the 1986 level, an increased number of the 46 ethnocultural groups experienced poverty in 1991 (contrary to the national trend).

· The same ethnocultural groups remain consistently disadvantaged (compared with the national average) when 1986 and 1991 data are compared on the unemployment and poverty dimensions. In short, there is a problem of persistent disadvantage.

These findings confirm the need for programs specifically targeted at ethnocultural groups that experience consistent socioeconomic disadvantage. In addition, our findings suggest the need for monitoring and program evaluation programs to discern whether the needs of specific ethnocultural groups are being met and/or how these needs change over time. Our findings illustrate that gender differences among the ethnocultural groups merit further study. For example, we found that the unemployment rate patterns for women differ from the unemployment rate patterns shown for men. The most obvious difference is that the average unemployment rate for women decreased between 1986 and 1991, while the rate increased for men over the same period of time.

(2) Edward Harvey, Bobby Siu and Kathleen Reil have completed and submitted to the Canadian Journal of Ethnic Studies a paper entitled “Ethnocultural Groups, Period of Immigration and Socioeconomic Situation.” The paper examines, for Canada in 1991, the socioeconomic situation for immigrants in 17 broad ethnocultural groups. Immigrants are compared across five periods of immigration before 1961, 1961-1970, 1971-1980, 1981-1987, and, 1988-1991. Recent data suggest that of all immigrants coming to Canada over 70 percent are members of visible racial minorities. In this study, both visible minority and non-visible minority ethnocultural groups are represented across the 17 groups. Recent studies by the Economic Council of Canada indicate that Canadian education and work experience are crucial factors in the socioeconomic adaptation of immigrants. The Council further notes that more recent immigrants have higher unemployment rates than their Canadian counterparts. Our paper assessed the socioeconomic situation of immigrants using measures for poverty, employment income and unemployment. The analyses produced a number of major conclusions:

· Recency of immigration is a critical factor in the socioeconomic integration of immigrants. Employment experiences of recent immigrants are more diverse than their earlier immigrating counterparts.

· The socioeconomic experience of different ethnocultural groups is not homogeneous. Immigrants of visible minority groups experience greater socioeconomic disadvantage compared with immigrants of non-visible minority ethnocultural group.

· Compared with immigrants who immigrated to Canada prior to 1981, immigrants who came to Canada after 1981 have higher unemployment rates, lower employment incomes and greater incidence of low income.

Our findings confirm that once the initial settlement period has passed, immigrants do not constitute an economic drain on society. Our study further suggests that current settlement policies and new policies are best targeted to immigrants during their first five years in Canada. Perhaps most importantly however, our findings suggest that immigrants from visible minority ethnocultural groups experience economic disadvantage that is persistent over the 30 year period covered during this study. Notable exceptions are visible minority immigrants from Japanese and Chinese ethnocultural groups. These findings confirm the need to re-define policies and immigrant settlement programs toward those visible minority ethnocultural groups experiencing persistent socioeconomic disadvantage. Further, since Canadian marketplace requirements and labour force skill requirements continue to change, immigrant settlement programs need to change accordingly.

(3) Edward Harvey and Kathleen Reil are currently preparing a paper that follows the same analytical framework outlined in (1) above except that the analyses will be focussed on gender differences in the socioeconomic adaptation of immigrants from different ethnocultural groups who immigrated to Canada at different points in time. The paper will be presented at the Third National Metropolis Conference in Vancouver, January 14-16 1999.

(4) Edward Harvey and Kathleen Reil will be participants in the CERIS Accommodating Diversity Project (ADP) Research Workshop organized by Michael Lanphier and Paul Anisef of York University and Gabriele Scardellato of the University of Toronto. This project is focussed on examining cultural and racial diversity within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on a number of parameters such as housing, socioeconomic situation and health care. In accordance with the focus of the ADP, our focus will be on analysing our Toronto CMA data in terms of such factors as ethnocultural group, period of immigration, gender and socioeconomic situation. We will be addressing a number of Toronto GTA centered policy and program delivery issues in connection with this study and will continue active collaboration with COSTI.

The data we have assembled and analyzed for 1986 and 1991 provide a solid platform on which to build. We will be developing a proposal to CERIS for the 1998-1999 funding year for the purposes of extending our analyses to a third point using 1996 Census data. This will provide a critically important opportunity to determine if the various trends we are discovering are linear or curvilinear.

B. Education Domain

1. Parent Participation in Elementary Schools: The Experience of Hispanic Immigrants

Research team (lead researcher, partners):

Carl Corter, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Maria Barrera, Department of Psychology, Hospital for Sick Children

Felipe Ibarra-Martinez, Community Researcher

Rosemarie Gibson, Community Researcher

Start date: September 1997

Date of completion: September 1998

Amount awarded from CERIS: $15,000

Abstract:

This study focussed on immigrant parents’ experiences and attitudes toward parent involvement in elementary school. We collected reports from parents at three elementary schools in the metropolitan region of Toronto through surveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews. The study was designed to provide timely information relevant to public policy development around parent involvement in elementary schools and school councils (cf. Ontario Education Improvement Commission, 1998), to extend the literature on parent involvement to include dimensions of diversity which have been given little attention, and to complement other lines of ongoing research by the investigators on parent involvement in schools, and on more general parenting issues among the Hispanic community. The results indicate that despite barriers to some institutionalized forms of involvement, these parents report interest and involvement in their children’s schooling in other forms that can be recognized and supported by schools.

Outcomes/results obtained:

Overview of the research undertaken

The study focussed on immigrant parents’ experiences and attitudes toward parent involvement in elementary school. We collected reports from parents at three elementary schools in the metropolitan region of Toronto through surveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews. The study was designed to provide timely information relevant to public policy development around parent involvement in elementary schools and school councils (cf., Ontario Education Improvement Commission, 1998), to extend the literature on parent involvement to include dimensions of diversity which have been given little attention, and to complement other lines of ongoing research by the investigators on parent involvement in schools (Corter, Harris, & Pelletier, 1998) and on more general parenting issues among the Hispanic community (Barrera, Corter, Bashirullah,1997; Corter, Barrera, Ragazzi, Saenz, Valenzuela, & Volpe,1997; Corter, Barrera, Ragazzi, & Valenzuela, 1996).

Dramatic changes in the Ontario public education system include the recently mandated School Advisory Councils (SACs). These have ostensibly been set up to make the system more open and accountable to parents and communities and similar councils have been recently set up all across Canada (McKenna & Willms, 1998) and in many other parts of the western world. Much of the effectiveness of these councils will depend on the degree to which they can involve diverse elements of the parent and community populations. At the same time, funding cuts to education and reorganization of boards of education place existing programs at risk, including those such as heritage/international language programs which may indirectly support parental involvement among some immigrant groups. Understanding the challenges of parent involvement among immigrant, visible minority, and economically disadvantaged parents in the GTA is crucial to the success of this major shift in educational service. Our research begins to build this understanding by focussing on immigrant parents facing the challenge of participating in their children’s school experiences. The perspective adopted in the research focuses on the elementary years as a time of opportunity for successful induction of parents into the work of schools, a time that begins as children enter kindergarten.

Active roles for parents in the education of children are prescribed in many of the effective preschool and kindergarten intervention programs (e.g., Lazar et al., 1982), as well as in visions of school reform for older children (e.g., Comer, 1985). Partnerships require understanding of parents’ perspectives as well as attempts to foster participation. It has long been an article of faith that parents can help to prepare young children for school by providing a stimulating environment during the preschool years and a secure social-emotional foundation for adapting to the transition to school. Depending on their own backgrounds, beliefs, and opportunities afforded by the educational system, parents can also participate in a variety of ways once their children enter school (e.g., Epstein, 1995). School councils represent one attempt to bring parents and community into the work of the schools; their growth is rapid and includes a number of variants with different degrees of structure, roles, and levels of participation in governance. An important lesson from the literature to date is that not all councils are equally effective, not all parent participation works well, and not all groups are equally represented in the councils. For example, our own normative surveys across several boards in Ontario, showed that approximately one-third of more than 400 parents in the sample identified themselves as ESL and one-quarter as members of visible minorities, but less than 10 percent of the sample of parent representatives on school councils self-identified as either minority status (Corter, Harris, & Pelletier, 1998). A crucial point to note is that parents’ participation in councils and other traditional parental roles such as volunteering are not options for most immigrant parents. Nevertheless, other forms of involvement may be more usual and just as important for children’s school success (see Sui-Chu & Williams, 1996). In our research team meetings one of our student members, a child of immigrants, reported that her parents never set foot in her school until she graduated from Grade 8, but they discussed her school work almost daily and exhorted her to do well. Can new policies on partnerships between parents and services be made flexible enough to accommodate and gain strength from approaches which don’t match the current mainstream?

Research results

Forty-eight parents at three elementary schools in the Toronto Catholic District School Board took part in focus groups and the majority completed a survey form in Spanish. The majority of parents were mothers. Thirteen parents across the three schools also took part in in-depth interviews, including a few fathers. Similar questions were posed in each form of data gathering

- How do parents see the goals of schooling?

- How do parents see their role in schooling?

- How are parents involved in the school and education at home?

- What attitudes and experiences do parent have in regard to the new SACs?

- How do the answers to the above vary by facility with English and with demographic factors (e.g. SES) and cultural differences within the Hispanic population of the GTA?

- Do parents report particular school practices which effectively involve them?

- What practices do families report about reading and family literacy activities?

The sample was diverse in terms of country of origin, time since arrival in Canada, facility with language, and socio-economic status, but was predominantly two-parent. As expected, factors such as language and time since arrival played a large part in the degree to which parents reported actively participating through in-school activities. Although all parents appeared to value education, not all parents saw themselves as able to provide regular support for school work in the home often because of constellations of work and economic strain.

The survey used in this study included many items from the "normative” study we carried out in several boards in Ontario in 1997 (Corter, Harris, & Pelletier, 1998), allowing comparisons with findings between the current sample and the broader sample. Some differences are expectable, such as reports of less volunteering by the Hispanic parents; other differences may provide new insights, such as the finding of more interest in school support for parent education among Hispanic parents. Some of the survey items asking about parent support for learning and literacy at home were unique to the present study. Since these items were also assessed in interviews and focus groups, some triangulation was possible in looking for patterns. However, in some cases there was divergence between the survey and the qualitative conclusions, usually in the direction of a more positive picture emerging on the survey. The field notes of the community researchers who conducted the surveys and interviews reveal that there were concerns about reading comprehension for some of the parents, even though the survey was in Spanish, and even more pervasive concerns about the social desirability bias in responses to the survey. Nevertheless, a number of points of convergence have appeared in our preliminary analyses. Some of these are listed below as examples of tentative conclusions with relevance for policy.

Nature of research collaboration:

The work was carried out with the cooperation of Hispanic community groups, the Toronto Catholic District School Board and NGOs serving the immigrant population in the GTA. Community research assistants were recruited through community groups. Administrative support for the study came from the Psychology Department at the Hospital for Sick Children, as well as from the Laidlaw Centre of the Institute of Child Study. Mrs. Mireya Cunningham, an educator and Guidance Counsellor at Jean Vanier Catholic Secondary School of the TCDSB; Mrs. Lita Gonzalez-Dickey, an educator and Community Liaison Worker in the Hispanic Community for the TCDSB; Mr. Antonio Garzon, long-term member of the Hispanic community and former member of the Asociacion de Padres de Familia de Habla Hispana; and Mr. David Morley, former head of Pueblito Canada, all assisted in giving advice and in making contacts with the Hispanic community. Mrs. Gonzalez-Dickey provided critical assistance in advising on school and community connections. Mr. Adelino da Silva of the International Languages (Elementary)/Community Relations office of the TCDSB was instrumental in setting up the collaboration with the Board. The principals of the participating schools and the international languages teachers went beyond the call of duty to assist the research. Finally, the parents themselves made the study possible through their enthusiastic participation; the degree of their collaboration is shown by their suggestion of what we should do in our next study: "You should ask the children what they think...”.

Contribution to training and/or professional development:

The graduate students working on the project have contributed in a number of ways and have had varied training experiences. Students have been analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data and have had the opportunity to contribute to survey design and coding systems for analyzing the qualitative data. Students have also done translation of focus group transcripts, conducted literature searches, constructed data bases on references, and written summary reports of relevant issues in the literature. Regular team meetings of the Parent Participation research team provided opportunity for training and discussion of the project with graduate students. Since two of the students are in a preservice teacher education graduate program (MA in Child Study), their research training is directly relevant to their professional training and the necessity of learning how to work with diverse parents.

Policy implications of work:

Our previous research (Corter and Harris, 1997; Corter, Pelletier, & Harris, 1998) has been reported to the Ministry of Education and Training and the Education Improvement Commission of Ontario and we met with a member of the writing team which produced the EIC report on school councils. On the basis of the initial survey work, we were able to strongly recommend that action needed to be taken on the under-representation of minority parents on school councils. The report of the EIC reflects this concern in its list of recommendations:

RECOMMENDATION 23: That principals and school councils be jointly responsible for ensuring that school council membership is representative of the school's entire community or communities. To represent the community, the principal and school council members must conduct outreach activities aimed at attracting parent and community members from all groups in the community, including visible minorities, Native people, people with disabilities or the physically challenged, and people from socio- economically disadvantaged areas.

This statement of good intentions needs to be supported by a better understanding of the challenges and multiple paths that need to be taken in working with immigrant families. We expect to bring a number of additional points to the policy arena from our just-completed work on immigrant parents. Based on our preliminary analyses, we expect the message may include the following points:

· Challenges to immigrant parents in becoming involved go beyond language to include other factors such as experience in the country of origin which may operate against the idea of "partnership” with government agencies or institutions;

· Policy support for general parent participation may actually increase inequities in learning outcomes for students unless the multiple challenges involving language, poverty and work faced by many immigrant parents are dealt with schools, boards, and ministries and their communities;

· The importance of home support for learning be recognized and extended among immigrant families; this in an area where some of the forces of exclusion do not operate.

· Capacity for direct involvement with in-school activities may develop through the school’s supporting other, more accessible, forms of involvement, such as home support for learning;

· Immigrant parents’ views on the goals of schooling at the elementary level are more global than the current emphasis on academic skill in curriculum and accountability in government policy; concerns about community and respect are common themes.

· School climate and initiatives such as cultural studies for children, parent education and first language family literacy may boost parental buy-in;

· Board programs and policies, such as heritage/international languages teaching, can make a substantial difference to parents’ contacts with the school;

· Parents wish to be better known as a community and have a number of ideas for building community participation, for example by volunteering to do translations for school communication.

We hope to arrange a meeting with a representative of the EIC and will be reporting as well to the board and schools and parents groups who participated in the research. As part of the dissemination effort, we hope that these meetings will have an impact on further policy development at the local and provincial level. We also hope that broader dissemination efforts will make our findings available at the national level where the policy implications may be considered.

2. Differences in Interactions of Teachers with Visible Minority Children in Preschool Settings

Research team (lead researcher, partners):

Kenise Murphy Kilbride Professor, School of Early Childhood Education,

Ryerson Polytechnic University

June Pollard, School of Early Childhood Education, Ryerson Polytechnic University

Martha Friendly, Childcare Resource and Research Unit

Julie Dotsch, Bias-Free Early Childhood Services

Start date: September 1997

Date of completion: September 1998

Amount awarded from CERIS: $14,871

Abstract:

In the Greater Toronto Area, the percentage of so-called “visible minority” immigrants arriving each year increases, as most newcomers or their ancestors come from places other than Europe. Their children are most vulnerable to differences in treatment between those who are “white” and those deemed “visible minorities”, so a research report indicating that white pre-schoolers were receiving the preponderance of positive interactions with their teachers even where the majority of children were children of colour merited a speedy re-investigation. This project examined positive interactions between 74 teachers and 980 pre-school boys and girls in non-profit child care centres in the GTA. Findings did not substantiate the earlier report. In fact, the group of children receiving the most disproportionately high percentage of positive teacher-child interactions was those who were visible minority boys. Consistent with a wide body of literature on sex differences in teacher-child interaction, however, was the finding that white girls are apt to receive the least positive teacher-child interaction of all four groups (white girls and boys, visible minority girls and boys) by every standard of measurement (teachers’ own status, length of experience, level of early childhood professional education, level of specific training for anti-racist or multicultural early childhood education). Implications are drawn for Ministries of Education, Faculties of Education, and school boards, as well as for teachers and researchers, from a reflection on these findings in the light of previous studies indicating that school-aged visible minority boys report interactions with teachers that are negative rather than positive, and in the light of other studies indicating that some immigrant girls have traditions that do not value female education, for whom teacher neglect would be all the more problematic.

Outcomes/results obtained:

Studies of teacher interactions in group settings have documented that boys dominate the classroom in both formal and informal discussion groups. Some findings include that boys spoke more than girls at a ratio of 3 to 1, had more turns at talking, and had more interactions with the teacher. Even in informal discussion groups where children were not expected to raise their hands or wait for the teacher to select them to answer a question, teachers inadvertently selected boys through eye contact, praised boys more than girls, gave boys more academic help and were more likely to accept boys’ comments during classroom discussion.

But a recent study suggested that “visible minority” status also serves to disadvantage children thus perceived. In 1997 undergraduates in the School of Early Childhood Education at Ryerson Polytechnic University conducted a study at the preschool level examining differences in teacher interactions based on children’s sex and visible minority status. A series of observations were conducted in four child care centres in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Thirteen teachers were observed as they interacted with preschool children; two-thirds of the children were “visible minority” and the remainder, “white”. The observations showed that the white children received a majority of the interactions that were labelled “positive” in spite of being the minority of the group, and that on the whole, white boys received the most attention. These findings warranted investigation for two reasons: first, they are contrary to what is supportive of the academic success of visible minority children whose families comprise the majority of Canadian immigrants and refugees in the 1990's, and second, they support the fears of immigrant families expressed in an earlier study who felt their children in child care centres were not being listened to and respected.

This project is an examination in greater depth, breadth, and complexity of the issues raised in the 1997 study. Using a sample of 74 teachers, trained and paired observers (one a visible minority group member and one white observer) looked at the types of positive interactions of teachers with 980 preschool children based on their sex and status (white or visible minority). As well, the teachers’ education and status were examined to draw implications for professional development and teacher training.

Comparing the positive interactions of child care providers in child care centres with visible minority children relative to those of white children the project attempted to discover: What are the differences experienced by children of visible minority groups in the quantity and quality of positive teacher-child interactions in Toronto child care centres; and what in the teachers’ training or lack thereof is correlated to these differences? “Visible minority children” were defined as those perceived to be of African, South Asian, Asian, Latino, or First Nations ancestry. “White children” were defined as those perceived to be of European descent. “Teachers” are divided between those who meet the criteria of the Day Nurseries Act of Ontario as early childhood educators and those who are qualified as child care assistants. “Positive interactions” were defined as those behaviours by a teacher that typically enhance children’s sense of their belonging, worth, and competence. Specifically, they were:

C teacher-initiated contact (any physical touching or verbal communication with a child that the teacher begins);

C being selected by the teacher to participate in classroom activities (any verbal communication or physical gesture that singles out a child during regular classroom activities and makes a request of that child to be somewhere or do something);

C having one-on-one time for 30 seconds or more (any positive contact, physical or verbal, between a child and a teacher who are in close proximity to one another for 30 seconds or more);

C receiving thoughtful answers to questions (any answer to a child who asks a question where the child appears satisfied with the answer);

C being given verbal praise for competence and achievement (any favourable verbal response from a teacher toward a child after an action in the area of cognitive, social, or motor development has occurred);

C given verbal praise - other (any favourable verbal response from a teacher toward a child for physical or non-competence-related attributes or behaviour);

C nonverbal behaviours (any favourable unspoken response from a teacher toward a child for any action in any area of development); and

C caring for a child in distress (any physical or verbal action by a teacher which calms an emotionally distraught child).

Current fourth-year students or graduates of the School of Early Childhood Education at Ryerson were sent in pairs into child care centres, where they observed one teacher over a two-hour period. Prior to conducting the observations, the observers received 7 hours of training and were provided with a 40-page manual. During observations, to avoid both bias on the part of the observers and their potential influence on the behaviour of the teachers, the observers were paired so that each team consisted of a white and a visible minority observer. Our sample included a total of 74 teachers in 21 child care centres in the GTA. In the sample there were 23 visible minority teachers (31 percent) and 54 white teachers (69 percent). The total number of children present during all 74 observations was 980, 586 of whom were visible minority (328 or 33.4 percent boys; 258 or 26.3 percent girls), and 394 were white (196 or 20 percent boys; 198 or 20.2 percent girls). The status of the teachers and the children was based on the perception of the observers.

Research Results

Analyses of findings to date focus on quantitative differences and include differences of positive interactions experienced among the four categories of children by sex and status: visible minority boys, visible minority girls, white boys and white girls. Still to be finished is the analysis examining the types of positive interactions by categories of teachers, which early results indicate will show significance across at least one or two areas. The most striking finding, however, is the non-support for the findings of the previous study regarding differences in positive teacher-child interactions between visible minority and white children, and the enduring contrast in the experience of girls and boys even at this early level of pre-school education:

Comparing the percentage of each group in the total number of children with the percentage of positive interactions that they actually received, the most common finding is that white girls receive the least attention and visible minority boys receive the most.

Other differences included:

C overall, while white girls receive the least attention and visible minority boys the most, the other two groups (visible minority girls and white boys) receive the same slightly high level of attention;

C when teachers are considered by status (23 were themselves visible minority; 51 were white) while both groups of teachers pay the least attention to white girls and disproportionately higher attention to the other three groups, the disproportionate attention given to visible minority boys was more pronounced among visible minority teachers;

C when teachers are considered by length of experience in the field (6 to 12 months; 1 to 3 years; 4 to 10 years; and over 10 years), every group gives the most seriously disproportionate amount of attention to white girls, and that proportion is negative; no patterns emerge in the attention given to the other three groups;

C when teachers are considered by their level of formal education in early childhood education (7 with none, 57 with a diploma, 10 with a degree), the one common pattern among them was that each category of teachers paid less attention to white girls than their numbers warranted;

C when teachers are considered by specific training in anti-racist or multicultural education (11 with at least one semester, 21 with a workshop or seminar, 42 with none) again, white girls receive the least attention, and specific training in this field is not the source of positive interactions for visible minority boys, as the group with the most training was the one group with a significant deficit in attention to them.

Contribution to training and/or professional development:

Through the reading assigned to participants in this project, ten undergraduate students received considerable insight into challenges facing children of visible minority groups. At least one of them has chosen this focus for graduate studies in education, and is currently enrolled in a graduate education program at the University of Toronto. These ten also received training in observing differences in teacher-child interactions, and in coding data and analysing it through SPSS. The graduate student hired as project manager received more detailed instruction in the uses of SPSS for data analysis, and gained experience in project management, report writing, and paper presentations at conferences. The community researchers received additional experience in working with academics in a productive partnership that also enabled them to work collegially with undergraduate and graduate students.

Policy implications of work:

Implications can be drawn at several levels:

C the threat of neglect in the education of young girls endures even as we enter a new century; educators must take seriously the persistent tendency of teachers even of the very young to pay more attention to boys, and university Faculties of Education and provincial Ministries of Education need to do more to remedy this than they are currently doing;

C in particular, where young girls are immigrants from cultures that traditionally undervalue the education of females, it is clear that Canadian teachers are ill-prepared to meet the challenge of rectifying this, and Faculties of Education bear a heavy responsibility for enlightening and empowering teachers in this regard;

C given that, at this early pre-school age, visible minority boys are observed to receive a fair, or even greater than fair, share of positive interactions with their teachers, educators need to examine closely the ways in which this shifts across the school years to reflect the impressions currently found in research on education in Canada, to the effect that the interactions experienced by visible minority males in the schools is negative, not positive;

C such research should be carried out jointly by a partnership of academics, ministries, and boards of education to ensure the greatest dissemination of the findings and the greatest participation in designing and implementing strategies to prevent this change in teacher-child interactions from positive to negative;

C immigrant girls who are members of visible minorities are less likely to be neglected by their teachers than white girls, but white immigrant girls run the risk of being excluded from positive interaction with their teachers; where there are language challenges that they experience, this will be even more detrimental for them than such neglect of white native-born girls.

Dissemination:

Conferences: European Association of Early Childhood Researchers

Ryerson University FCS Conference

Other: Graduate Seminar at York University

Interviews with press in Netherlands & Ireland

Faculty & Graduate Student Seminars in Orebro & Gothenburg, Sweden.

3. School Experiences of Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Youth: Risk and Protective Factors in Coping with Bullying and Harassment

Research team (lead researchers, partners):

Debra Pepler, Department of Psychology, York University

Jennifer Connolly, Department of Psychology, York University

Wendy Craig, Department of Psychology, Queen’s University

Start date: September 1997

Date of completion: September 1998

Amount awarded from CERIS: $ 15,000

Abstract:

Bullying and harassment are pervasive among late elementary and high school students. In a recent survey of students in Grades 5 to 8, 15 percent of students report that they have been bullied on a regular basis in the current school year (Pepler et al., 1999). Moreover, 40 percent of students also reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment (McMaster, Connolly, Craig, & Pepler, 1997). Consistent with previous reports that immigrant and ethnic minority youth may be targets for discrimination, we found that 14 percent of elementary school children reported that they had been bullied because of their race (Pepler, et al., 1999). The psychosocial impact of these experiences among majority youth have been documented, but little is known about the experiences of minority and immigrant youth. In the CERIS-supported research, we examined bullying and harassment among immigrant and ethnic minority youth in late elementary and early high school years.

Outcomes/results obtained:

This study comprised the fourth wave of data collection in a longitudinal research program on bullying and victimization. With the CERIS funds, we were able to collect data on elementary school students in Grades 7 and 8 (most of whom had participated in our previous data collection) and high school students in Grades 9, 10, and 11. We have now received funding to follow longitudinally the young adolescents currently in our project through the high school years. With the CERIS data, we were able to focus on three issues. First, we compared the bullying and victimization experiences of immigrant and ethnic minority and majority status youth in late elementary and high school years. Secondly, we examined the behaviour problems associated with bullying and victimization experiences related to ethnicity. In our continuing analyses, we are examining the family, peer, and school factors associated with bullying and victimization.

Participants

This study comprised two samples. The first sample included 331 children in Grades 7 and 8 drawn from three elementary schools. The second sample included 762 students in Grades 9, 10, and 11 from two high schools.

Measures

The measures administered to high school students in the present study included are listed below. A subset of these measures was administered to the elementary school students.

(1) Focus on You: A questionnaire to gather demographic information including: age, ethnicity, family background, family composition, parental education, occupation and employment, languages spoken at home. Immigration status was assessed using the relevant questions from the National Longitudinal Survey on Children and Youth (Statistics Canada).

(2) Safe School Questionnaire: This questionnaire assesses students’ experiences of bullying and victimization in school, including questions specific to experiences of bullying related to race/ethnicity.

(3) Adapted Aggression Scale: This questionnaire assesses direct physical and verbal, as well as relational aggression, both as perpetrator and as victim. Items specific to close friends, peers, and romantic partners are included.

(4) Sexual Harassment Questionnaire: This questionnaire is a modified version of the AAUW questionnaire which assesses perpetration and victimization of 12 sexual harassment behaviours.

(5) Dating Questionnaire: This questionnaire assesses social experiences in dating relationships and with romantic partners.

(6) Extreme Peer Orientation: This questionnaire assesses students’ susceptibility to peer pressures.

(7) Peer Networks Questionnaire: This questionnaire describes the cliques and peer networks of each student.

(8) Peer Nominations Questionnaire: This questionnaire gathers students’ nominations of classmates who are most likely to bully and harass their peers.

(9) Pubertal Development Questionnaire: This questionnaire measures the physical status of adolescents during the pubertal transition.

(10) Youth Self-Report: This questionnaire assesses the presence of emotional symptoms and behavioural problems.

(11) Peer Deviance Questionnaire: This questionnaire assesses the youths’ involvement in delinquent and antisocial behaviours with peers.

(12) Sexual Harassment Attitude Scale: This questionnaire assesses students’ perceptions of the acceptability of sexually harassing behaviour.

(13) Adapted Relationships Inventory: This questionnaire assesses the quality of relationships with parents, friends, and dating partners.

Preliminary Results

To examine the experiences of bullying and harassment among minority and immigrant youth, we conducted two sets of analyses. First, we compared the experiences of students from ethnic minority groups to those of students within the ethnic majority (European-Canadian). Secondly,

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we compared the experiences of students who were not born in Canada (0^th generation), students who were born in Canada but whose parents were not born in Canada (1^st generation), and students who were born in Canada and whose parents were born in Canada (2^nd generation). The preliminary results are summarized below.

Are you a bully, victim, or bully-victim?

We asked students to indicate whether they considered themselves a bully, victim, bully-victim or none of these categories. There were not significant differences in the frequencies of self-nominations for children from the majority and minority ethnic groups. The following table summarizes the percentage of students who identified with these groupings.

Table 1. Bully and Victim Status according to Ethnic Majority or Minority Status

	Bully	Victim
Elementary School
Majority	17 percent	24 percent
Minority	26 percent	23 percent
High School
Majority	12 percent	12 percent
Minority	14 percent	24 percent

There were also no significant differences in the frequencies of self-nominations for children from the three immigrant status groups. The following Table 2 summarizes the percentage of students who identified with these groupings.

Table 2. Bully and Victim Status according to Immigrant Status

	Bully	Victim
Elementary School
0^th Generation	16 percent	15 percent
1^st Generation	20 percent	23 percent
2^nd Generation	19 percent	27 percent
High School
0^th Generation	14 percent	12 percent
1^st Generation	10 percent	11 percent
2^nd Generation	14 percent	13 percent

Have you been bullied by a student from another ethnic group because of your ethnicity?

In response to the question asking whether they had been bullied by a student from another ethnic group because of their ethnicity, 17 percent of all elementary students and 17 percent of all high school students reported that they had experienced ethnic victimization. The data for minority/majority groups and for the three generational categories are presented in Table 3. Chi-square analyses indicated that elementary students from a minority group were significantly more likely to report ethnic victimization than those from the majority group. Although the rate for minority high school students was also higher than that for majority high school students, the difference did not reach significance.

When reports of ethnic victimization were compared for immigrant status (i.e., 0^th, 1^st, and 2^nd generation), Chi-squared analyses indicated that high school students who were not born in Canada experienced significantly more victimization related to their ethnic background than those born in Canada. Although more elementary students born outside of Canada also experienced ethnic victimization than those born in Canada, the difference was not significant.

Among the high school students, boys were more likely than girls to report that they had experienced ethnic victimization: 22 percent of high school boys and 12 percent of high school girls reported that they had been victimized for their ethnicity. Among the elementary school students, 20 percent of boys and 16 percent of girls reported that they had been victimized for their ethnicity.

Table 3. Have you been bullied by a student from another ethnic group because of your ethnicity?

Minority Group

Majority Group

0^th

Generation