Session Information
ERG SES D 07, Pedagogy and Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Refugee studies in education is considered a new field, with the majority of international scholarship specific to refugees emerging within the last fifteen years. Historically in educational research, refugees have been subsumed within the categories of immigrants, generally, and English as a Second Language (ESL) groups specifically. While refugee students do share characteristics with immigrant and ESL groups, they also exhibit unique characteristics including but not limited to trauma and patterns of migration. Confounding these characteristics, is the historical, ideological, and oftentimes exclusionary patterns of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) definition of refugees. The growing body of literature that specifically addresses refugees as a unique group rarely questions the political dimensions of the UNHCR and its latent influences on the pedagogy and practice of teachers of refugee students. With the continuing rise of displacement globally, frequently leading to refugee status, it is imperative for educational scholars to interrogate the origins of the contemporary refugee designation and the populations and interests it was meant to serve, while also examining current international perspectives on who should be included under the category of “refugee” and how those practices of inclusion/exclusion interface with national ideologies, particularly the countries represented in the United Nations security council. An analysis of the term “refugee” will help guide the educational theories driving instructional practices, programmatic and curricular design, and the aims of educating refugees.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Betts, A., Loescher, G., & Milner, J. (2008). UNHCR: The politics and practice of refugee protection (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Fasulo, L. (2009). An insider’s guide to the UN (2nd ed.). New Haven: CT: Yale University Press. Gibney, M. J., & Hansen, R. (Eds.). (2005). Immigration and asylum: From 1900 to the present. Santa Barbara: CA. McCarthy, F. E., & Vickers, M. H. (Eds.). (2012). Refugee and immigrant students: Achieving equity in education. Charlotte: NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Pinson, H., & Arnot, M. (2010). Local conceptualisations of the education of asylum‐seeking and refugee students: from hostile to holistic models. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(3), 247–267. Pinson, H., Arnot, M., & Candappa, M. (2010). Education, asylum and the “non-citizen” child: The politics of compassion and belonging. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Rutter, J., & Jones, C. (Eds.). (1998). Refugee education: Mapping the field. Staffordshire: UK: Trentham Books.
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