"We're all about being together as a family": Community sports program fosters newcomer immigrant girls' academic achievement, resilience, and coping.

Abstract

Drawing from a liberation psychology framework, this paper describes a community soccer program designed to address inequalities in education, health, and social inclusion among newcomer immigrant girls. The mixed-methods study drew upon youth voices to explore how the program fostered resilience, effective coping, and academic achievement. The study included a quantitative sample (n = 20) and a qualitative sub-sample (n = 13), as well as school-wide comparison data (n = 431). Participants were from 13 countries of origin and spoke ten languages. Data collection involved community-based participatory methods and a convergent parallel mixed-methods design. Quantitative data included a demographic questionnaire, school records of grade point average (GPA), and program participation; qualitative data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. A one-sample t-test determined that academic achievement (GPA) among program participants (M = 3.12; SD = 0.86) was significantly higher (p = .003; t [18] = 3.462) than the school's average (M = 2.44; SD = 1.42). Directed content analyses of qualitative data explored mechanisms for promoting achievement and empowerment through three distinct forms of resilience: academic, psychological, and social, and problem- and emotion-focused coping strategies. This study offers a unique, sports-based pathway to address inequalities among an understudied population of immigrant girls.