engleski

Immigrant status – the same definition, the different meaning : Comparative analysis of immigrant status in PISA 2006 research in UK and Croatia

International studies of school achievement mostly use the immigrant status as an important variable in a prediction of student’s success. In PISA, immigration background is based only on three variables: student’s and their mother’s and father’s country of birth. The aim of this paper is to compare actual meaning and functioning of the immigration background variable in two different national contexts using the PISA 2006 Croatian and UK data. Structure of immigration background variable was analysed and compared between countries and with the official immigration statistics in both countries. Unexpectedly, results showed that in Croatian sample were more immigrants than in the UK sample. Analyse of nationality structure indicate that in Croatian sample immigrants are dominantly Croatian people from Bosnia and Herzegovina whose mother tongue is Croatian. Most of them have Croatian national identity and Croatian citizenship so they do not see themselves as immigrants, while in UK sample immigrants are dominantly from countries with different culture and language. In spite of the same definition of immigrant status for all participating countries in PISA, meaning of the obtained results is not the same. Definition of immigrant status in PISA seems more appropriate for western countries in which immigrants, who came from different cultures and speak different language, are dominant group. Mother tongue, time spent in host country, immigration policy and cultural differences between country of origin and host country must be taken into account when using immigration status as a predictor variable.

PISA 2006; immigrant status; achievement; cross-cultural comparison

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