Leading K–12 Refugee Integration: A Guided Entry Into New Teaching and Learning Experiences Approach From Ontario

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

Abstract

Objectives

This session will focus on Guided Entry into New Teaching and Learning Experiences (GENTLE), a reception centre designed to welcome Syrian student refugees and facilitate their early integration into schools in one Ontario, Canada, public school board. Our examination focused on the values and policies that guided leaders’ decision-making, the practices educators employed, as well as the allocation and use of resources to ensure refugee students were integrated successfully.

Framework

The framework’s three concepts: inclusive leadership, an approach leaders use to “operate within equitable, horizontal relationships, and as a collective process that is organized specifically to strive for inclusion” (Ryan, 2006, p. 8). Leadership practice: “advocating for inclusion, educating participants, developing critical consciousness, nurturing dialogue, emphasizing student learning and classroom practice, adopting inclusive decision- and policy-making strategies, and incorporating whole school approaches” (Ryan, 2006, p. 11). Resources refers to funding, time, people, materials, equipment, physical facilities, knowledge, and skill, both individually and/or collectively (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014b).

Methodology & Data Sources

This chapters draws from the direct accounts of leaders working at multiple levels of Ontario’s K-12 educational governance (e.g., ministry, district, school, community agency) who played a role in the integration of Syrian refugee children. These leaders partnered with local university researchers to form a panel of experts who gave a presentation at a conference on how leaders across the sector supported the integration initiative. Session participants provided feedback that highlighted the relevance of the GENTLE case, and we continued our practitioner–academic collaboration after the conference by elaborating on the feedback received and coauthoring this paper.


Results

Leaders stressed the importance of the government’s overarching strategic policy articulating inclusive values, vision, mission, and goals to guide the practice of all educational actors working in the system. They also noted that upholding these values is a perpetual work-in-progress, made easier if they accord with one’s own. In addition to practices, organizational routines/processes were regarded as essential to achieving inclusive educational goals and upholding values, and must be grounded in a wide range of evidence, including local/anecdotal insights, to achieve the inclusive aims. The strategic use of resources was also simultaneously evident across all levels of governance in support of innovation for student refugee integration. The GENTLE case mirrored the good practices supported by research, however, leaders did note areas for future improvement: deeper, critical interrogation of educational programming for refugees offered by the school system and of what it means to lead equitably; find ways to inspire educators of varying perspectives to commit to a particular vision of inclusion for newcomers; and give greater attention to the scalability of the model and the effective mobilization of personnel and time.

Significance of the Work

The Ontario case can inform the work of system, district, school, and community leaders—both national and international—who seek practices and initiatives that can inclusively and effectively support the integration of refugee students into schools and neighbourhoods and the required resources for educators’ to enact/implement both across levels of education governance.

Author

• Brenton Cyriel Faubert, University of Western Ontario