Improving Refugee Student Learning Through Building a More Meaningful Home-School Relationship Among Arab Communities

• In Event: Canadian Educational Initiatives to Support Refugee Student Learning From Three Provinces

Abstract

Canadian classrooms are welcoming unprecedented numbers of Arabic-speaking learners with interrupted and limited prior educational experience as Canada’s Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative saw a total of 40,000 individuals resettled between November 2015 and December 2016 (IRCC, 2018, p. 1). Canadian school districts and community partners are working together to deliver educational programming and undertake research to identify best practices for achieving responsive inclusion of these learners and their families (Miles & Bailey-McKenna, 2016; Nofal, 2017; Papazian-Zohrabian et al., 2017 ). Parental engagement in student learning is positively correlated with learning behaviour and academic outcomes (Epstein & Sheldon, 2006; Goodall & Vorhaus, 2011; Hamilton, 2004; Jeynes, 2005; Pomerantz & Moorman, 2010; Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007; Young & Chan, 2014). Epstein’s framework of six types of involvement is a widely cited organizing and analytical framing tool for exploring dimensions of involvement in the context of home-school-community collaboration for learning success (Epstein & Sheldon, 2006). The theory underpinning the six types of involvement emphasizes “the need for reciprocal interactions of parents, educators, and community partners to understand each other's views, to identify common goals for students, and to appreciate each other's contributions to student development” (Epstein & Sheldon, 2006, p. 4).
Hence, the leading research questions guiding this study were: “How can teachers and refugee parents optimize communications to best meet the learning needs of their students/children and how can parental engagement facilitate this better communication between refugee parents and teachers.” To answer these question s, the study team organized and implemented a pilot study in schools in a large urban school district in Western Canada during the summer of 2018, where they conducted 3 focus groups with Arabic speaking refugee families and school district teachers. Our team of Arabic speaking, culturally responsive researchers facilitated, simultaneously, one focus group for the mothers and another for the fathers, both in Arabic, as well as one focus group for the teacher in English. Later, between the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2019, the research team facilitated 6 focus groups with a total of 36 participants. Participants included 11 parents (5 Fathers and 6 Mothers), 21 teachers, and 4 support staff. Focus groups were audio recorded and then transcribed and translated where needed and then analysed thematically. On one side, some results posed as supportive to parent-teacher collaboration such as parenting as support for learning, facilitation of communications, volunteering and participation in school-based activities, fostering learning at home, as well as involvement of parents in decision-making. In contrast, the disconnect between teachers, parents and school, as well as the difficulty of access to community activities posed as barriers to student learning improvement. Implications focused on increasing school involvement and awareness of the unique challenges for refugee families as well as facilitating more opportunities for collaboration in a culturally responsive context. As far as scheduling is concerned, it was recommended that schools look at more innovate and flexible schedules for parent-teacher conferences among other home-school community building activities.

Authors

• Rahat Zaidi, University of Calgary

• Dania El Chaar, University of Calgary

• Christine Oliver, Calgary Board of Education

• Hanan Alwarraq, University of Calgary