Language for an unknowable future: How language ideologies and pedagogies shape the lives of refugee children (Poster 15)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

There are currently 65 million people living as refugees globally, half of whom are of school-going age, and these numbers are on the rise. Within this context, refugee education policies are increasingly focused on the inclusion of refugees in national school systems in host countries rather than their education in parallel, refugee-only schools, as was previously the trend. There is little guidance about how to implement this policy of inclusion, however, not least related to language use at school. Instead, refugee children are often 'submerged' in languages they don't understand, expected to navigate a dominant language of power with little support and only nascent research about implications for children's learning, future-building, and sense of belonging in exile. My research begins to address this gap. A comparative case study conducted in Kampala, Uganda, I draw on ethnographic observations across schools and NGO/government convenings and semi-structured interviews with Sudanese and South Sudanese refugee families, Ugandan teachers, and policymakers and program leaders intervening in refugee education (n=106). I find that refugee families' aspirations are not fully represented in the education policies and practices that impact them directly. Rather, I argue that assimilationist language policies and pedagogies undermine the aspirations of refugee families as they strive to create futures that enable educational and economic opportunities, and that also maintain connection to people and places of origin. I propose alternate policy and pedagogical approaches that move away from either/or conceptualizations of language at school and toward cultural and linguistic recognition in the education of refugees.

Author

• Celia Reddick, Harvard University