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Kobe University Repository : Thesis AN ANALYSIS OF FAMILY, SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY FACTORS ON STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN PITAGORAS SECONDARY 学位論文題目 NETWORK SCHOOLS IN JAPAN AND BRAZIL(日本とブラジルのピタ Title ゴラス中等ネットワーク学校における生徒の成績に関する家庭、学校 、コミュニティ要因の分析) 氏名 Coolican, Mariana Author 専攻分野 博士（学術） Degree 学位授与の日付 2019-05-08 Date of Degree 公開日 2020-05-01 Date of Publication 資源タイプ Thesis or Dissertation / 学位論文 Resource Type 報告番号 乙第3372号 Report Number 権利 Rights JaLCDOI URL http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/handle_kernel/D2003372 ※当コンテンツは神戸大学の学術成果です。無断複製・不正使用等を禁じます。著作権法で認められている範囲内で、適切にご利用ください。 PDF issue: 2021-10-04 Date of Submission: 2018/08/24 AN ANALYSIS OF FAMILY, SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY FACTORS ON STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN PITAGORAS SECONDARY NETWORK SCHOOLS IN JAPAN AND BRAZIL 「日本とブラジルのピタゴラス中等ネットワーク学校における 生徒の成績に関する家庭、学校、コミュニティ要因の分析」 Faculty: Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies Academic Adviser: Professor Keiichi Ogawa Name: Mariana Coolican ABSTRACT The year 2018 is the 110th anniversary of Japanese migration to Brazil, after Japan’s first immigration wave in 1908 from Japan to Brazil. The number of foreigners in Japan has increased in the last ten years, with a total population of 191,362 Brazilians. Since the revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 1990, Japanese-Brazilian second generation (Nisei) enter Japan as ‘Newcomers’, being temporary workers or dekasegi. Since some of these temporary workers also came accompanied by spouses and their children, the Government of Japan assumed responsibility for the schooling of those children, including their acquisition of Japanese language, inducing acculturation. The support is for families whose children are going to Brazilian schools in Japan as well as for those enrolled in Japanese schools. These children have bilingual and bicultural inclinations, often moving from one system to another and possibly commuting between two countries. Children whose parents plan to stay in Japan need Japanese language skills and are required to enroll in Japanese schools, while children whose parents intend to return to Brazil enroll in Brazilian schools. In Japan, Brazilian schools started in 1990 in the Tokai and Kanto regions. The Japanese Government invited the Pitagoras Network Schools (hereafter, PNS) in 1997 to support the education of Brazilian children of dekasegi parents. By 2008, ninety Brazilian schools were located mainly in those geographical regions schooling 7,000-8,000 children, of which six schools pertained to the PNS. The PNS have had difficulties increasing the academic level of their students. The low academic performance seems to occur more in children of families whose social capital is diminished by the migratory situation, or in children who lack daily use of the vernacular language Portuguese. Likewise, it an issue for children with limited reading and writing in the language used both at home and at school, or in those children with limited environments for i socialization. These factors are often triggered by the lack of parental involvement in the child’s school learning. Various authors interested in describing the situation of temporary foreign workers and their children in Japan try to find explanations for children’s school failure, emphasizing their limitation in knowing the characteristics of Brazilian families, their language, and understanding their lack of having a social network upon arrival in Japan, considered as elements of cultural deprivation. They also indicate the importance of the type of school in which their children are immersed. The Vestibular Simulado (VS) examination is an institutional practice of the PNS to prepare students with an optimum profile for entering the university in Brazil. This preparation has become the method-of- choice for PNS to evaluate their students. Student achievement, examined through the year-end scores and the Vestibular Simulado scores, serve as a prospect for admission to the university in Brazil. This dissertation focuses on children whose parents choose Brazilian schools in Japan because of their primary intent to return to Brazil. Against this background, this dissertation aims to investigate four research questions. Firstly, this study examines the characteristics of the students and the family factors who attend the PNS in Japan and Brazil, and what influence these characteristics have on the student’s academic achievement. Secondly, it assesses the correlation to student’s academic achievement of the PNS and community factors facilitated by schools. Thirdly, this study analyzes how the student characteristics and family factors in Japan and Brazil differ in influencing the prospect of PNS students to pass the university entrance examination in Brazil. Lastly, the study evaluates the students, parents, and school practitioners expectations about the student’s educational aspirations regarding their future, linked to exam results. The significance of the study is described in terms of filling a gap in the literature and analyzing advancing theory using the case of PNS. The theoretical framework applied to this study consists of the Theory of Social Reproduction in Education and the Theory ii of Social Mobility, as complementary. The Theory of Social Reproduction in Education is applied utilizing the economic, social, and cultural resources as the conceptual framework of this study, including the cultural capital of a person as their ‘habitus’ and their ‘field’, which are configured as a structure of social relations. The reproduction is understood as an intervening process where cultural capital influences family background and academic rewards of children at school. The Theory of Social Mobility attempts to explain that the opportunities for children to obtain the required skills and credentials are important factors influencing the degree of generational mobility understood as upward, horizontal, or vertical mobility. To answer the research questions, the study utilizes two case studies with data from three cities in Brazil and three cities in Japan where a large number of Nisei, Sansei and Yonsei generations of Japanese-Brazilian descendant students enroll in PNS, in a comparative study. The sample of the quantitative analysis is 81-88 out of 142 students in Japan -numbers which change depending on the subjects; and 242 out of 540 students in Brazil, aged 13–19, using a primary source data of questionnaires elaborated based on the 2003 Brazilian National System for Evaluation of Basic Education (SAEB). The questionnaires incorporate the relevant information to measure adequately the explanatory constructs of students’ academic achievement, that are generally conceived of as the parent’s demography, economic resources, cultural resources, social resources, and parental involvement from the students’ families, conducted in the cohort 2009-2011. The sample for the qualitative analysis consists of 26 teachers/principals and 43 classroom observations in Japan and Brazil. The data of the annual year-end scores of the students are used to analyze student performances by subject-area. To evaluate the effect of student’s characteristics of gender, age, race, ethnicity, and grade, on the results the student’s academic achievement measured by year-end scores in both settings, this study utilizes the Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) approach. In line with the findings of previous literature, the study confirms that the gender, age, iii race, ethnicity, and grade have a significant influence on year-end exam results in PNS in both countries. The study confirms the relevance of child’s characteristics on academic achievement, such as gender, indicating that boys achieve better test scores in mathematics/sciences and girls achieve better test scores in reading/literature. Female students outperform male students in Japan PNS in mathematics, literature and foreign language English, while boys do better in geography. In Brazil, boys score better on history, literature, foreign language English and geography, while in other subjects, no significant difference is noted in the performance between boys and girls. Additionally, the test scores for mathematics decline with the age of students. Caucasian descendant students and Mestizo descendants students have clearly better results than students from another race. Nikkei students across both countries have lower results in mathematics, history, literature, and geography. To assess the effect of family factors of the constructs Parent’s Demography, Economic Resources, Social Resources, Cultural Resources, and Parental Involvement measured by year-end scores in Section 5.1.2., the study cannot confirm the relevance that mother’s years of schooling has a bigger impact on girls than on boys as previous studies suggest. Our findings suggest that parent’s years of schooling are more significant on student’s academic achievement, with male students being the most favored. The results show that the cluster variables Parent’s Demography and Parental Involvement could explain the largest part of the variety taken as a whole. Parent’s Demography was mostly positively influencing students’ results in Brazil, where the link between the educational level of parents and the achievement of their children was stronger. Here some evidence of horizontal mobility was found as the correlation was significant. Social Resources and Cultural Resources only had a small influence as a cluster variable in positively influencing the results of mathematics and history year-end results respectively.
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