Young Adults From Refugee Backgrounds Using Critical Literacy Practices for Social Change

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Adult Immigrant and Multilingual Education (Table 2)

Abstract

Young Adults Acting On the World, a research project with refugee-background young adults, addresses the injustices of long withheld opportunities for critical literacy engagement and the marginalization of refugee-background students through a qualitative study, patterned after social design-based experimentation, in which I sought to explore the ways they took up critical literacy to act upon the inequities faced in their everyday lived experiences. Through critical literacy sessions, collaborative workshops, creation of critical literacy products, speaking events, interviews, and other data, I found that the participants expanded their understanding of literacy to include an action-oriented perspective which considers others, and co-constructed an imagined community of education for themselves and others from refugee backgrounds, which was grounded in their sense of belonging.

Author

• Jennifer C. Mann, Duke University