This collection of empirical work offers an in-depth exploration of key issues in the education of adolescents and adults with refugee backgrounds residing in North America, Australia and Europe. These studies foreground student goals, experiences and voices, and reflect a high degree of awareness of the assets that refugee-background students bring to schools and broader society. Chapters are clustered according to the two themes of Language and Literacy, and Access and Equity. Each chapter includes a discussion of context, researcher positionality and implications for educators, policy-makers and scholars.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
SECTION ONE: LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
Chapter 1. Christopher Browder: Recently Resettled Refugee Students Learning English in U.S. High Schools: The Impact of Students’ Educational Backgrounds
Chapter 2. Bryan Ripley Crandall: “History Should Come First”: Perspectives of Somali-born, Refugee-background Male Youth on Writing in and out of School
Chapter 3. Koeun Park and Verónica Valdez: Translanguaging Pedagogy to Support the Language Learning of Older Nepali-Bhutanese Adults
Chapter 4. Delila Omerbašić: Girls with Refugee Backgrounds Creating Digital Landscapes of Knowing
Chapter 5. Katerina Nakutnyy and Andrea Sterzuk: Sociocultural Literacy Practices of a Sudanese Mother and Son in Canada
Chapter 6. M. Kristiina Montero: Narratives of Trauma and Self-healing Processes in a Literacy Program for Adolescent Refugee Newcomers”
Chapter 7. Anne Dahl, Anna Krulatz, and Eivind Torgersen: The Role of English as a Foreign Language in Educating Refugees in Norway
SECTION TWO: ACCESS AND EQUITY
Chapter 8. Amanda Hiorth and Paul Molyneux: Bridges and Barriers: Karen Refugee-background Students' Transition to High School in Australia
Chapter 9. Amadu Khan: Educating Refugees through “Citizenship Classes and Tests”: Integration by Coercion or Autonomous Agency?
Chapter 10. Erin Papa: Using Photovoice with Cambodian and Guatemalan Youth to Uncover Community Cultural Wealth and Influence Policy Change
Chapter 11. Eva Holmkvist, Kirk Sullivan, and Asbjørg Westum: Swedish Teachers’ Understandings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among Adult Refugee-background Learners
Chapter 12. Annette Korntheuer, Maren Gag, Phillip Anderson, and Joachim Schroeder: Education of Refugee-background Youth in Germany: Systemic Barriers to Equitable Participation in the Vocational Education System
Chapter 13. Amy Pucino: Iraqi Refugee-background Adolescents’ Experiences in Schools: Using the Ecological Theory of Development to Understand Discrimination
Chapter 14. Eliana Hirano: Besides a Degree, What Do Refugee-background Students Gain from College?
Chapter 16. Martha Bigelow: Afterword
About the Author :
Shawna Shapiro is an Associate Professor of Writing and Linguistics at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA, where she also directs the Writing and Rhetoric Program. Her research interests include transitions from secondary to postsecondary education, innovations in teaching writing to multilingual students, and other asset-oriented approaches to teaching and research with linguistically diverse college students. In addition to her scholarly work, she is involved in local initiatives benefitting English learners in her community.
Raichle Farrelly is an Assistant Professor in the Applied Linguistics Department and MA TESOL Program at Saint Michael’s College, Vermont, USA. She is a teacher educator and researcher with a focus on L2 teacher education, reflective teaching, and teaching English to adult refugee-background students. Her first co-authored book, published by TESOL Press, focuses on how instructors can support international students in higher education settings.
Mary Jane Curry is Associate Professor, Department of Teaching and Curriculum, Warner Graduate School of Education, University of Rochester, New York, USA, where she also directs the Writing Support Services. She is co-editor of TESOL Quarterly’s Brief Research Reports section and Multilingual Matters’ series, Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation. Her research focuses on access to academic writing and knowledge production by scholars and students using English as an additional language.
Review :
In these pages, socially aware academics have integrated educational and social issues, attending consciously to refugees as whole people. The editors and authors understand how the educational concerns of refugees are inseparable from their political, geographic, cultural and psychological contexts, and are to be commended for producing this worthwhile volume.
This volume offers a wealth of information about what crossing (language) borders means for students with a refugee background. It demonstrates the opportunities modern technology offers them to stay connected to their heritage culture and languages, to create new bonds with host community members, and to foreground their voices. In doing so, it invites educators to go beyond the classroom walls to meet students’ experiences and needs.
With deeply nuanced and textured accounts of the various factors that influence the language, literacy and learning experiences of refugee-background learners of all ages and in many contexts, this volume will be of great value to anyone interested in facilitating refugee-background learners’ access to educational, social and economic opportunity.
Educators, administrators, teacher educators, researchers, advocates, and policymakers will find this volume to be a valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship with and for adolescent and adult refugee-background students. The editors and authors provide useful models of strengths-oriented perspectives and scholarship promoting social and educational change for those invested in culturally-sustaining refugee education and research.
This book has informed my research on developing technology-enhanced language learn-ing environments for refugee-background adolescents by encouraging the involvement ofstudents as co-researchers and allowing their experiences, identities and needs to shapeour designs [...] The book serves as a valuable resource for teachers,researchers, and policy-makers seeking to expand their understanding and learn moreabout research conducted with this student group.
While the authors’ repeated calls for more and better research validates the need to be able to account for demands for funding, resources and the like, the work that is presented is valuable precisely because of its specificity and the lines drawn, connections made from one particular set of occurrences to broader possibilities for interventions, shifts and new approaches to engaging refugee learners of all ages and abilities across the educational spectrum. This collection moves the needle well in the direction of furthering collective wisdom, offering solutions and possibilities in a time of darkness around the world
...unique themes and the individuality of participants involved highlight the importance of consulting your learners and making their voice count, which are the key messages I take from this book. It is a welcome resource for educators, teacher trainers and policy makers looking for perspectives that aim to overcome deficit models of learners with a refugee background and look to empower them through truly collaborative classrooms and research projects.
The book is both challenging and encouraging to read. The range of contexts represented in the book demonstrates the breadth of the challenges facing refugee-background students, both adults and children, as they negotiate the different educational, cultural, and political constraints and circumstances of their resettlement. The book will be of interest to those who work with refugee-background students at all levels of education, and offers sensitive approaches and educational practices that seek to fully engage with individuals and their unique experiences of life in a new country.
