Socioeconomic Status, Culture, and Reading Comprehension in Immigrant Students.

Joaquín A Ibáñez-Alfonso,Luis J Fuentes,Juan Andrés Hernández-Cabrera,Pedro Macizo,David Saldaña,Jon Andoni Duñabeitia,Adelina Estévez,María Teresa Bajo

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.752273

Abstract

Research on reading comprehension in immigrant students is heterogeneous and conflicting. Differences in socioeconomic status and cultural origins are very likely confounds in determining whether differences to native pupils can be attributed to immigrant status. We collected data on 312 Spanish students of Native, of Hispanic origin–therefore with the same family language as native students- and Non-Hispanic origin, while controlling for socioeconomic status, non-verbal reasoning and school membership. We measured reading comprehension, knowledge of syntax, sentence comprehension monitoring, and vocabulary. Differences among groups appeared only in vocabulary and syntax (with poorer performance in the non-Hispanic group), with no differences in reading comprehension. However, regression analyses showed that most of the variability in reading comprehension was predicted by age, socioeconomic status, non-verbal reasoning, and comprehension monitoring. Group membership did not significantly contribute to explain reading comprehension variability. The present study supports the idea that socioeconomically disadvantaged students, both native and immigrants from diverse cultural backgrounds, irrespective of the language of origin, are probably equally at risk of poor reading comprehension.

Highlights

An estimated 11% of children in schools worldwide are born to immigrant parents and can be considered to have an immigrant background (IB)
There was a total of 157 immigrant-background children (IB, 72 boys and 85 girls) who had both parents born outside Spain, and 157 native children (NA, 66 boys and 91 girls), all of whom were from Spanish-speaking families and participated in a larger nationwide study on reading development
For Aim 3, we carried out a regression analysis with age, nonverbal reasoning, socioeconomic status (SES), group membership, and the different components, as predictors of reading comprehension

Summary

Introduction

An estimated 11% of children in schools worldwide are born to immigrant parents and can be considered to have an immigrant background (IB). This figure hides a great deal of variability among countries: Numbers range from under 1% for some (e.g., Korea, Poland or Japan) to nearly 30% for others (e.g., Luxembourg or Macao-China), and in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European countries around 25% 15-year-old students. Kaufman’s Brief Intelligence Test We administered the Spanish version of the test that provides two main scores: Vocabulary, and Matrices (which was used as non-verbal IQ measure).

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion