Immigrant students’ psychological adjustment in the school context: A meta-synthesis of qualitative research on acculturation

This contribution focuses on the characteristics of the school context and their impact on immigrant students’ acculturation and adjustment at school. Research suggests that the ways immigrants acculturate is related to their well being (e.g. Phinney, et al., 2001; Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999), although findings have been contradictory across methods and studies (e.g. Rogler, 1991; Escobar & Vega, 2001). Debates in acculturation research currently center on issues of acculturation measurement (e.g. Berry, 2009; Rudmin, 2009), as most research is conducted in the quantitative tradition. In addition, some have suggested (Birman, 2011) that research on acculturation in the tradition of cross-cultural psychology adopts an overly individualistic perspective, and lacks attention to the specific contexts of acculturation. Alternatively, the contextual approach proposes that the relationship between acculturation and adjustment is shaped by the surrounding context (Birman & Simon, 2013). For immigrant children, schools are the setting where the process of acculturation unfolds, and an important context in which to study their adjustment and well being (Birman, et al., 2007; Makarova & Herzog, 2011). Though rarely used in this tradition of acculturation research (Chirkov, 2009), qualitative methods are uniquely suited to gain insight to facilitate theory development, as well as appreciate the contextual nature of the acculturation process. Yet we are not aware of efforts to synthesize the empirical qualitative literature on this topic. Applying the methodology of meta-synthesis for qualitatieve research (Walsh & Downe, 2005) our contribution attempts to integrate results from qualitative studies on impact of acculturation on immigrant students’ psychological adjustment in the school context. For this purpose 84 articles which matched the inclusion criteria were selected. Overall, the results of our study show that within the school context a number of structural as well as process characteristics can be identified as crucial for immigrant youth psychological adjustment. Moreover, our findings indicate that immigrant youths’ psychological adjustment is related to other individual outcomes of acculturation in the school context such as behavioral adjustment, peer-relationships, academic achievement and identity development of immigrant youth.

An outbreak of Arthroderma vanbreuseghemii dermatophytosis at a veterinary school associated with an infected horse

We report a case of an outbreak of inflammatory dermatophytoses caused by Arthroderma vanbreuseghemii (formally Trichophyton mentagrophytes pro parte) that involved an infected horse, the owner and at least 20 students, staff and stablemen at a veterinary school in Bern (Switzerland) that presented highly inflammatory dermatitis of the body and the face. Transmission from human to human was also recorded as one patient was the partner of an infected person. Both the phenotypic characteristics and ITS sequence of the dermatophytes isolated from the horse and patients were identical, consistent with the conclusion that the fungus originated from the horse. Three infected persons had not been in direct contact with the horse. Although direct transmission from human to human cannot be ruled out, fomites were most likely the source of infection for these three patients. Inspection of the literature at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century revealed that this dermatophyte was frequently transmitted from horses to humans in contact with horses (stablemen, coachmen, carters and artillery soldiers). The rarity of the present case report at the present time is likely related to the transformation of civilisation from the nineteenth century to nowadays in Europe with the change of horse husbandry. In addition, the inadequate immune response of the horse and the high number of people in contact with it at the equine clinic may explain the exceptional aspect of this case report.