y when they move back home, this can have an adverse effect on the child's belief in the importance of learning anew language or adjusting to a new culture.
Similarly, Phinney (1991) has reported that bilingual/bicultural children's experience of school can be affected by parents' desire to avoid interaction with those of the host culture. If, for example, one or both parents do not learn the language or if they avoid interaction with people in the culture by seeking only the company of fellow immigrants, this can negatively affect their children's ability to interact with non-immigrant children at school.
What the just cited literature shows is that while there has not been a direct and comprehensive investigation of the general school experience of immigrant children from cultures that are similar or dissimilar to their own, there is reason to believe that being in a culture different from one's own makes for far more problems in school than merely language/academic difficulties. Given this, it seems reasonable to wonder whether the effects of immigration on children's school experiences significantly differ depending upon whether the host country is similar or dissimilar to the children's native country. This study was designed to answer this question.
The research problem examined in this study was an investigation of the general school experiences (academic and psychosocial) of two groups of immigrant families and their children: (1) a group of families and children who have immigrated to the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) from other Arab countries; and (2) a group of families and children who have immigrated to the U.S.A., from other Arab countries. The school experiences of the children were assessed by having teachers and children complete researcher-designed survey instruments assessing both the academic and psychosocial experiences of the children. Also, parents were surveyed for both their views of children's ge...