Leading for Praxis and Refugee Education

• In Event: 25.020 - Education, Immigration, and Migration: Policy, Leadership, and Praxis for a Changing World

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
An increasing body of literature examines the consequences for educational systems as more refugees and asylum-seekers enter various education sectors. Despite a surge of interest in this area, the practical and theoretical implications for school leaders’ practices and praxis remain under-examined and under-theorised. Moreover, refugee students are too frequently homogenised and essentialised under the umbrella of immigrant or culturally diverse students. This chapter contributes to filling this gap by examining school leaders’ praxis and practices when it comes to nurturing and supporting refugee students.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
There is a growing literature base integrating ideas of social justice and equality across teaching, learning and educational leading/managing (Arar, 2015; Bogotch & Shields, 2014; Brooks, Jean-Marie, Normore, & Hodgins, 2007). There is also a small but significant body of literature conceptualising educational leading as praxis (Wilkinson, 2008; Wilkinson, Olin, Lund, Ahlberg, & Nyvaller 2010), that is, as leadership practice which is “morally committed, oriented and informed by traditions in the field” (Kemmis & Smith, 2008, p. 4). We build on this research base by exploring how leading for praxis may be enacted in the field of refugee education. We use a practice lens which foregrounds how practices of leading may interconnect with other key educational practices (i.e., teaching, professional learning, researching and students’ learning) to build ecologies of practices that create the necessary conditions to nurture refugee students academically and socially.
Methods
This presentation is part of a large, parallel Finnish Australian study entitled Educational Success through the Eyes of a Refugee Child (Kaukko & Wilkinson 2018), consisting of interviews with students and staff, drawings by students, photographs and observation notes of classroom teaching.
This presentation draws on staff interviews in an Australian school. Interviews were analysed using thematically, guided by the following research questions: How do practices of leading interconnect with professional learning, teaching, students’ learning and researching practices (i.e., form ecologies of practices) in ways that enable and/or constrain socially just education for refugee students? What are the implications of these connections/disconnections for how ‘good’ professional practice/praxis is being understood and experienced by educational leaders when it comes to refugee education?

Findings
Our findings shift the focus from a valorisation of the individual leader’s qualities to the practices of leading and their interconnectedness (or lack of connection) with other key educational practices such as teaching, professional learning, researching and refugee students’ learning, and how leading practices are established and exist in sites in ecological arrangements in their site.
Our findings also show that leading is historically and socially constructed praxis, informed by the past and oriented to the future.
Scholarly significance
Our findings challenge the dominant representations of educational leadership as a form of techné for school effectiveness or measurable improvement. We show how and why educational leadership as praxis may be realised, and how focussing attention on connections between different educational practices may foster positive transformations to educational practice for refugee students.

Authors

• Jane Wilkinson, Monash University

• Mervi Kaukko, Monash University