Cross-Cultural Cross-Roads: Understanding the Social and Acculturation Experiences of Newcomer Syrian Refugee Students in Toronto, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Between November 2015 and December 2016, Canada resettled 39,636 Syrian refugees in over 350 communities across the country (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, 2019). In fleeing their home country and resettling in a new sociocultural environment, refugee children cope with many pre- and post-migration stressors and traumatic experiences, must navigate language barriers, and undergo the process of acculturation (Elsayed et al., 2019; Hadfield, Ostrowski, & Ungar, 2017), placing them at risk for developing various mental health problems (Eruyar, Maltby, & Vostanis, 2018). Although supportive peer relationships can help to alleviate such challenges, research indicates that refugee students commonly face peer rejection and social exclusion (Oxman-Martinez et al., 2012), are at risk for victimization and bullying (Scherr & Larson, 2010), and experience frequent racial/ethnic/refugee-based discrimination at school (Li, 2009). Through the bidirectional and bidimensional acculturation perspectives of Sam and Berry (2006) and the acculturation orientations of Berry (1990), this descriptive case study with embedded units sought to understand (1) the social challenges faced by newcomer Syrian refugee students concerning their foreigner/refugee status, race/ethnicity, religion, culture, and linguistic background, (2) factors contributing to their (in)abilities to develop meaningful and supportive school-based peer relationships, and (3) how these social challenges and peer relationship experiences implicated their acculturation and adjustment to school in Canada. Semi-structured independent interviews with four participants, ages 9-14, from a community immigrant resource centre in Toronto, Canada revealed that, although participants felt comparatively happier and safer in Canada than in Syria and previous transit countries, all participants endured significant challenges associated with the language barrier that implicated their social integration and ability to develop friendships with school peers. All participants reported ongoing ethnic/racial and refugee-based bullying and discrimination persisting throughout the first year to two years after resettlement, improving with increased English language proficiency. Three participants reflected characteristics of adopting Berry’s (1990) integration acculturation strategy, with one participant passing through the stages of forced assimilation, separation, and eventual marginalization (Berry, 1990). Study limitations, research implications, and suggestions for educational practice are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".