Teacher Preparation, Classroom Pedagogy, and the Refugee Crisis in National Education Systems

• In Event: The Role of Education as a "Panacea" for Refugee Youth in Transition

Abstract

Traditional classroom teachers in destination countries are often unprepared for meeting the needs of refugee and asylum-seeking children who settle in their communities and begin attending mainstream schools. While teacher training programs for classrooms and schools in conflict and post-conflict zones or refugee camps have been developed and deployed by national governments and international organizations in several countries (Shepler & Routh, 2012), teacher training and professional development in receiving nations that are not in conflict zones or in mainstream schools that are not part of refugee resettlement camps are much less common or unavailable altogether. By contrast, adult refugees who worked as teachers in their home countries before being displaced increasingly have access to teacher training programs in their host or destination countries, which prepare them to teach in schools in their new communities (Martin, 2016). Yet, the majority of schools and classrooms in destination countries, which receive refugee and asylum-seeking youth, are filled with teachers who are native to the destination country only and have little or no training in teaching to or addressing the unique needs of refugee and asylum-seeking youth (MacNevin, 2012; Naidoo, 2013). For example, teachers in mainstream schools in Germany who have Syrian refugees in their classrooms are more likely to be native Germans.
Given the relevance and importance of formal education to the successful transition and resettlement of refugee youth (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Alba, Sloan, & Sperling, 2011; Hek, 2005), there is a remarkably thin research base on teacher preparation and pedagogy with refugee students in destination countries (Pinson & Arnot, 2007). In fact, the widespread lack of regular and legitimized training on the teaching of and caring for refugee youth in most destination countries’ teacher preparation or professional development programs, suggests that there is a genuine refugee crisis at hand in receiving country’s national education systems. This research investigates the teacher crisis for refugee youth using international education data on teachers, refugee and asylum-seeking youth, and characteristics of formal education, teaching, and learning in destination countries that are member states in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The question this research answers is: How does teacher training and professional development in OECD countries’ national education systems prepare them to meet both the academic and non-academic needs of refugee and asylum-seeking youth?

Authors

• Alexander W. Wiseman, Texas Tech University

• Ericka Lynn Galegher, Lehigh University