How to Enhance Immigrant Students’ Participation in Arctic Schools?

Participation increases immigrant students’ willingness to learn the language of and integrate into their new country. This article describes practices that enhance immigrant students’ participation in a classroom community. The study’s purpose was to create opportunities for participation in the classroom as well as positive foundation for immigrant students (N = 10, aged 7–15 years) who had arrived recently in the Arctic area of Finnish Lapland to learn their new country’s language and integrate within the community. The research was designed, realized, and analyzed by relying on Lave and Wenger’s (Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991) theory of the communities of practice. According to the results, immigrant students could first interact with the group, obtain a position at the margin of the group, and start moving toward the center of the group with the help of a vital person for participation (broker) the students found. How to enhance immigrant children’s motivation and appreciation of the Arctic culture and Finnish students’ acceptance of immigrant children in is discussed in the article.