A comparative study of the academic and social experiences of migrant pupils in different school types in Northern Ireland

While there is a significant body of research on the experiences of pupils in Northern Ireland within the separate school structures, the experiences of migrant students has, to date, largely been neglected. While their number is still relatively small compared to other countries in the UK the issue has been the speed and extent of the increase of migrant students into a region which has been previously characterised more by political violence and emigration than migration (NIA, 2016). Consequently, their needs have not featured on pre/in-service teaching programmes and where multicultural education did exist, it tended to focus on bringing together the two indigenous Protestant and Catholic traditions in NI rather than on broader issues of cultural and racial diversity (Purdy & Ferguson, 2012).
This study aims to attend to this gap by exploring the experiences of migrant students in NI's primary integrated and separate schools and the readiness of teachers in these schools to teach in ethnically diverse environments. It also aims to underpin the development of curricular and school resources that will help schools respond in a way that is informed by student experience rather than driven by personal perspectives and intuition of teaching professionals. This is particularly pertinent in NI and more globally, given the limited scale of qualitative empirical research which currently exists on this topic.
The study will draw primarily on theories of culturally relevant pedagogy and cultural capital to provide a lens through which to examine the experiences of teachers and young people from migrant communities in schools in NI. Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) maintains that if teachers are to be effective facilitators of learning in the classroom, they must be non-judgemental and inclusive of the cultural backgrounds of their students (Brown-Jeffy & Cooper, 2011). CRP's focus on the role that the intersection between school and home-community cultures does and should play in the delivery of instruction in schools (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995) make it a particularly useful lens with which to explore the experiences of migrant students in schools in NI. NI is a 'divided society' with two dominant groups who are mainly educated apart in a separate school system that is accused of reproducing sectarianism (Cantle, 2001). Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital (1990) will also be employed. A person's cultural capital is linked to their habitus (embodied disposition and tendencies) and field (social positions) which are configured as a social-relation structure (King, 2004). The field is the place of social position which is often a site of conflict where social groups endeavour to establish and define what constitutes cultural capital, within a given social space (Bourdieu, 1990).
The research will be guided by key research questions:
1. How do migrant and refugee pupils lend meaning to learning and forging social relationships within Northern Ireland's primary schools?
2. How do educational leaders and teachers understand their role in teaching pupils and leading schools that are ethnically diverse?
3. How are the needs of minority ethnic students understood and framed by policy makers?

The study will be undertaken using broadly qualitative research methods. The emphasis is on understanding the lived experience of students and their teachers. Specifically, the research will be informed by broad debates on narrative research which allows for a more detailed exploration of the individual experiences. It is particularly useful in attending to sensitive issues, and the focus on storytelling can allow for the subtle yet powerful facets of racism or prejudice to emerge in individual's stories. Discourse analysis (the study of social life, understood through analysis of language in its widest sense) will be used as a way to investigate and interpret meaning both from conversation and culture.
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