Presenters
Amalia Fawcett – Centre for Multicultural Youth
Hanya Senjov – Mercy Connect Program, Catholic Education Office
Dr Kirsten Hutchison – Deakin University
Audience: Teachers at all levels and sectors and anyone else working with multicultural and EAL young people.
Session Overview
This session will provide an opportunity to hear from 3 speakers with varied experiences in Building Communities. It will provide strategies to help schools and teachers build relationships with parents, volunteers and the wider community. This session is suitable for teachers at all levels and sectors and anyone else working with multicultural and EAL young people.
Please help spread the word
To help VicTESOL promote this event, we would encourage you to download the flyer for this event and display it in your school staff room or in a public area of your institution.
Click here to download the flyer
Presenter Information
Hanya Senjov
Team Coordinator, Learning Diversity, Catholic Education Melbourne
Hanya has worked in Catholic Education for 28 years and has taught in both Catholic primary and secondary schools. She has a Graduate Diploma in TESOL, Educational Administration and a Masters of Literacy Education from the University of Melbourne. Hanya has been an ESL teacher, a Literacy Leader, Learning Support Leader and Deputy Principal in her time with Catholic Education. Her current role is as a Team Leader, Learning Diversity at Catholic Education Melbourne which includes responsibility for New Arrivals and Refugees, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and Intervention.
Mercy Connect in Partnership with Catholic Education Melbourne
Mercy Connect is a support program supported by Catholic Education Melbourne operating in schools with Refugee Students, assisting them to integrate into the Education system. The program is coordinated by Mercy Works Inc. which is a ministry of the Sisters of Mercy Institute (Australia and PNG). The program operates with volunteers with great success and volunteers work either individually or in small groups.
Amalia Fawcett
Amalia came to CMY after working for 14 years in the international aid and development sectors. Her area of specialisation was child rights and as such she has trained people around the world in both emergency and development situations.
She has an MA in African Studies from Yale University and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration from Oxford University. She has lived and worked in countries as diverse as Tanzania and Switzerland, the Solomon Islands and the UK, and has always trained in a multicultural environment.
Moving into the role with CMY has enabled her to unite her academic background and professional experience with her love of training.
Kirsten Hutchison
Presentation Abstract
Side by Side: Exploring The Affordances of Homework Support Programs for Socially Just Education
The increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in schools in a globalised world is one of the most crucial challenges for educators. The educational inequities between culturally and linguistically diverse students and privileged populations remain a significant issue for those concerned with socially just education.
In Australia there has been a proliferation of Homework Support Programs funded by Governments and welfare agencies targeting specific populations, such as Indigenous and refugee students; many rely heavily on volunteer tutors. The rationale for homework support programs rests in the recognition that sociocultural contexts shape students’ capacities to take up the learning opportunities offered at home and at school.
Conceptualized as compensatory education for poor and culturally and linguistically diverse students, after-school homework clubs and tutoring programs offer an alternative space for the completion of homework for students whose families may not have access to the forms of capital required to complete homework.
This presentation draws on a series of ethnographic studies of homework, to examine the lived experience of homework for students and their families in socio culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Through case study snapshots from three Australian homework programs, the presentation will explores the affordances of Homework Support Programs for productively reshaping learner dispositions and agency.
Biography
Kirsten Hutchison is a senior lecturer in Language and Literacy at Deakin University and teaches in undergraduate, masters and higher degree by research programs, with a focus on early and middle years language and literacy teaching, new and traditional literacies and community literacies.
Her research and teaching interests are centred on language and literacy and the nexus between education and social justice. Several of her current research projects involve working with teachers and academics to develop digital and culturally responsive pedagogies, work-integrated learning and internationalised curriculum. She coordinates a mentoring program at Deakin University which involves pre-service teachers collaboratively researching their literacy and teaching practices in culturally diverse secondary school communities.
Her research experience also includes major projects funded by the Australian Research Council, the Higher Education Equity Partnership Program, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development Victoria, the Catholic Education Office Melbourne and collaborations with the Centre for Multicultural Youth.
Cost $20 Member $30 Non-Members
