Hanna Ragnarsdóttir, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education Studies
"Without exception, adopted children have a lot of support at homes and they generally do well in school," says Hanna Ragnarsdóttir, senior lecturer in multicultural studies, who together with Elsa Sigríður Jónsdóttir is researching adopted children in Iceland and their experiences of adjustment and the school system.
The research began in 2005 and is still ongoing. The first step was exploring the experiences of families adopting children. "The children were adopted in 2002 and 2004, ten children in each group, and they were all around one year old when they came to Iceland," says Hanna. Now they are talking to the children themselves and investigating their experiences in school, from preschool to primary school. The goal is to explore how they are faring in their studies, their social circumstances and whether they face any particular challenges. Attention is also given to their identities and how they see themselves in Icelandic society.
Hanna Ragnarsdóttir
"It will be interesting to follow the adopted children further and their parents are very supportive of continuing research."
Hanna has been researching the adjustment of immigrants in Iceland for the last 15 years. She has long wanted to explore whether the experiences of adopted children were similar to immigrant children and their families. "In 2004 I went to a symposium from the Icelandic Adoption Society to familiarise myself with the matter. We then initiated this research and that was the inspiration," she says.
Hanna says that the families of adopted children are strong. Incidents relating to skin colour and origin have come up in school but they have been tackled. At the same time, the children are very open about their origins. "It will be interesting to follow the adopted children further and their parents are very supportive of continuing research," says Hanna.