ABSTRACT
The gathering of studies presented in this volume has been an extraordinary journey. It started with our commitment to understanding and improving the educational experiences of immigrant children in their new host countries. We have had first-hand experiences both with teaching newly arrived children and with preparing the future teachers of such children. We believed that to prepare future teachers better to work in an increasingly diverse global world, we needed a better understanding of the daily struggles of the newly arrived families, their children, and their teachers as they tried to learn about one another and to negotiate the complex issues related to the education of the young. The official statistics indicating an increased diversification of the student population in the receiving countries as a result of the new global mobility were no longer just numbers to us as we worked in various capacities in classrooms in our respective countries, Canada and the United States. These were real children from around the world. We have observed over the years that the efforts of individual schools to support newly arrived children academically and socially have had various
degrees of success, and we have evaluated programs and initiatives implemented by local school authorities or local governments that have not always achieved anticipated outcomes. We have also observed many dedicated teachers who have made a difference in the lives of newly arrived children and their families.
