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Publicaciones

IMMIGRATION, LANGUAGE AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN SPAIN. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Authors

Alvarez-Sotomayor, Alberto , MARTÍNEZ COUSINOU, GLORIA

External publication

No

Means

Rev. Int. Sociol.

Scope

Review

Nature

Científica

JCR Quartile

SJR Quartile

JCR Impact

0.919

SJR Impact

0.225

Publication date

01/07/2020

ISI

000576256000002

Scopus Id

2-s2.0-85094841134

Abstract

Since the nineties, publications that deal with the relationships between immigration, proficiency in the language of instruction and academic performance of children of im-migrants have multiplied in Spain. The majority defend the linguistic disadvantage hypothesis when explaining the poorer performance of these students. This paper reviews this literature within the Spanish context in order to assess its contributions, limitations and gaps. Despite the advances, it is concluded that the absence of research that si-multaneously measures the proficiency in the language of instruction and the academic performance precludes rigorous empirical knowledge of such relationship and, hence, the contrast of the aforementioned hypothesis. The size of both the samples and the subsamples of the national origin groups, as well as a proper control for certain relevant vari-ables, are pointed out as other research challenges.

Keywords

Children of immigrants; Educational achievement; Linguistic integration; Spanish language proficiency