Session Information
07 SES 07 A, Critical Democratic Citizenship
Paper Session
Contribution
Across various parts of the global north, the numbers of refugee and immigrant students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds is steadily increasing. Recently, the EU has accepted thousands of refugees from Syria and other parts of the world. However, while member countries have accepted a quota of refugees for resettlement, ‘their settlement policies and practices create the conditions for the marginalisation of refugees … [who] face racist and attitudinal barriers which are further impediments towards their full inclusion in society,’ (Taylor and Sidhu, 2012:41). For example, few member states offer the same educational opportunities to immigrants as to nationals (Nonchev & Tagarov, 2012) and Rutter (2006, in Block et. al. 2014) has identified the issue of refugees being treated as a homogenous group.
As critical educators working in teacher education and the field of intercultural learning, we have been collaborating on a research project that we believe could make a significant contribution to debates about the education of refugees and immigrants in increasingly plural societies and the extent to which such education can lead to greater social cohesion (Nonchev & Tagarov, 2012:11). Lack of access to education for refugees in EU member states is identified as a core concern (British Council, 2015), but the nature of this access and the conceptualisations of integration evident in supporting policies also need to be critically examined.
The pilot project reported here builds on research conducted between 2007-2012 (Austin et. al., 2014; Pirbhai-Illich, 2013; Pirbhai-Illich et. al., 2011, 2010 & 2009). These projects applied Culturally Responsive Pedagogies (CRP) (Ladson-Billings, 1995) to literacy education with minoritized and marginalized young people, including those from First Nation communities. The projects had a social justice orientation in working with future teachers to imagine the major social implications of their teaching and how they might develop approaches to curriculum instruction that would not only better serve all, but importantly historically neglected and underserved populations. Key findings from these projects indicated that in order to be more effective in engaging marginalized students, teachers need to develop a relational understanding of classrooms as an educational space, and that CRP needs to include relations that enable teachers to work with students’ cultural capital through eliciting their ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et. al. 1992).
The pilot project (Pirbhai-Illich & Martin, 2015) aimed to investigate the effect of novel approaches to culturally responsive literacy that addressed concerns about how CRP has been applied, which include narrow conceptions of culture, language and literacy (Pirbhai-Illich et. al. 2009). The approaches were informed by Martin Buber’s (1985) two-fold conceptualization of relationality, “I-It” and “I-Thou”, where the former is object focused and leads to an orientation of teaching ‘to’, based on partial knowledge of the student, and the latter is relational and leads to an orientation of teaching ‘with’ based on a thorough awareness of the student ‘as a whole being and affirm[ing] him in this wholeness’, (Buber 1958: 164-5). We also considered the concepts of invitation (Purkey & Novak, 1996; Schmidt, 2004) and hospitality (Derrida, 2000) to be central to developing trusting, reciprocal relationships.
Our aim was to therefore to explore a dialogic invitational approach, and then to investigate how it was possible for the pre-service teachers to build on this and maintain a hospitable environment during weekly 1-1 tutoring sessions with marginalized adolescents, over eight weeks in total. Our research questions were therefore:
1. What approaches can pre-service teachers use to open up an inviting space for interaction and learning?
2. Once open, how can pre-service teachers work with their students to maintain that engagement over a period of time?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Andreotti, V. (2011). Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Austin, T., Pirbhai-Illich, F., Grant, R., Tinker Sachs, G., Wong, S. Nasser, I., & Kumagai, Y. (2014). From Research to Transformative Action: Interpreting Research Critically in Bhopal, K., & Deuchar, R. (Eds.) Researching Marginalized Groups, New York: Routledge. British Council (2015). Beyond aid: educating Syria's refugees. Accessed from https://www.britishcouncil.org/organisation/policy-insight-research/insight/beyond-aid-educating-Syrias-refugees 14/1/2016. Block, Karen; Cross, Suzanne; Riggs, Elisha; and Gibbs, Lisa. (2014). Supporting schools to create an inclusive environment for refugee students’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, Vol. 18, No. 12, 1337–1355. Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou 2e, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Translation: R. Gregory Smith. Derrida, J. (2000). ‘Hostipitality’ Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5 (3), 3–18 Giroux, H. (1985). Critical Pedagogy, Cultural Politics and the Discourse of Experience, Journal of Education, 167(2), 22-41. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 32(3), 465-491 Luke, C. & Gore, J. (1992). Feminisms and critical pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Noddings, N. (1998). Philosophy of education Boulder:CO: Westview Press. Nonchev, A. & Tagarov, N. (2012). Integrating refugee and asylum-seeking children in the educational systems of EU Member States. Bulgaria: Center for the Study of Democracy Pirbhai-Illich, F. (2013). Crossing borders: At the nexus of critical service learning, literacy, and social justice. Waikato Journal of Education, 18, 2, 79-9 Pirbhai-Illich, F. (2010). Aboriginal students' engagement and struggles with critical multi-literacies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Dec. 2010/Jan. 2011, 54 (4), 257-266. Pirbhai-Illich, F. & Martin, F. (2015, unpublished). Understanding hospitality and invitation as dimensions of decolonizing pedagogies when working interculturally. Teacher Education for Equity and Sustainability (TEESNet) conference, Liverpool, UK. July 2015. Pirbhai-Illich, F., Austin, T., Paugh, P., & Farrino, Y. (2011). Responding to 'innocent' racism: Educating teachers in politically reflexive and dialogic engagement in local communities. Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching and Research (JULTR), 7, 27-40. Pirbhai-Illich, F., Turner, N., & Austin, T. (2009). Using digital technologies to address Aboriginal adolescents' education: An alternative school intervention. Journal of Multicultural Education and Technology, 3 (2), 144-162. Purkey, W. W. & Novak, J. M. (1996). Inviting school success (3rd edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Schmidt, J. J. (2004). Diversity and Invitational Theory and Practice. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, Vol 10, p. 27-46. Wink, J. (2005). Critical Pedagogy. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon
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