LEARNING TO BE LITERATE: ISSUES OF PEDAGOGY FOR RECENTLY ARRIVED REFUGEE YOUTH IN AUSTRALIA

Abstract

This paper focuses on issues of access to productive literacy learning as part of socially just schooling for recently arrived refugee youth within Australia. It argues that a sole reliance on traditional ESL pedagogy is failing this vulnerable group of students, who differ significantly from past refugees who have settled in Australia. Many have been ‘placeless’ for some time, are likely to have received at best an interrupted education before arriving in Australia, and may have experienced significant trauma (Christie & Sidhu, 2006; Cottone, 2004; Miller, Mitchell, & Brown, 2005). Australian Government policy has resulted in spacialized settlement, leaving particular schools dealing with a large influx of refugee students who may be attending school for the first time (Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, 2004; Sidhu & Christie, 2002). While this has implications generally, it has particular consequences for secondary school students attempting to learn English literacy in short periods of time, without basic foundations in either English or print-based literacy in any first language (Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, 2006). Many of these students leave schools without the most basic early literacy practices, having endured several years of pedagogy pitched well beyond their needs. This paper suggests that schools must take up three key roles: to educate, to provide a site for the development of civic responsibility, and to act as a site for welfare with responsibility.

Notes

¹Students in Australia are able to attend high school until the end of the school year in which they are 18 years old. This has implications for young refugee people who arrive in Australia in their late adolescent years as the period that they are able to access a school education may be short or indeed non-existent. Teachers express concern at the pressure placed on students, teachers, and schools to provide literacy instruction in what are sometimes very short timelines before mandated completion of school results because of the age of these young people.

²This sponsorship often places considerable financial burden on those who act as sponsors, who are often themselves former refugees.

³This research was supported under Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP05597). The views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council or other members of the project team.