Refugee education in Australia: what helps, what hinders and what needs to change

(2024 VicTESOL Symposium)

11 November 4:30pm – 5:30pm AEDT, Online

Previous research has established that young people from refugee backgrounds may have experienced loss and trauma prior to coming to Australia, may experience  ongoing racism and discrimination in their host country, and may struggle to adapt to a new and sometimes unfamiliar culture (Arnot & Pinson, 2005; Baak et al., 2020; Block et al., 2014; Cooc & Kim, 2023; Correa-Velez et al., 2016; Dryden-Peterson et al., 2019; Keddie, 2012; Koyama & Kasper, 2021; McIntyre & Hall, 2020). Students from refugee backgrounds may also require additional learning support to engage with the Australian education system due to limited English language capabilities, missed or interrupted schooling, and unfamiliarity with Western curricula and schooling approaches (Brown et al., 2006; Woods, 2009).

Our study, the Refugee Student Resilience Study, sought to explore how schools foster resilience for students from refugee backgrounds.  To do so, we examined existing policies that shape refugee education and undertook case studies with seven secondary schools.  The case studies were undertaken across two phases. The first phase engaged with over 50 school leaders and teachers to understand current school practices.  The second phase privileged the perspectives and voices of almost 50 students from refugee backgrounds from across the seven schools. The students described the school-level relationships, activities and services that enable them to develop resilience despite their sometimes-challenging life experiences as young refugees as well as their concerns about cultural issues and educational arrangements that impede their positive development as emerging citizens of an increasingly diverse Australia.

In this presentation, we present key findings from school staff and refugee background students that highlight what currently works and what could be done better in refugee education.

Speaker

Dr Melanie Baak  is a Senior Lecturer in UniSA Education Futures and co-convenor of the Migration and Refugee Research Network (MARRNet) and the Race, Coloniality and Education collective. She is a member of the Centre for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion. Her research and teaching are underpinned by understandings of how systems and structures work to marginalise sections of the population, particularly Afro-diasporic peoples and those from refugee backgrounds in settler colonial Australia. She currently holds an ARC DECRA Fellowship where she is exploring understandings of un/belonging for Afro-diasporic youth in Australia, particularly in schools. She was a Chief Investigator on the ARC Linkage Refugee Student Resilience Study (2018-2023). Melanie was awarded an Endeavour Research Fellowship to the University of Glasgow in 2017 where she researched schools as sites of resettlement for Syrian refugees.

Cost

Tickets for all sessions of the 2024 VicTESOl Symposium are now available here. Individual tickets will be released on 26 September 2024.

$15 – VicTESOL members (including members of other state TESOL associations)
$35– Non-members
Become a member today, for member prices!