Language for an unknowable future: refugee children’s and families’ experiences with language in exile

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: Comparative Methods

Proposal

I am a PhD Candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where Dr. Sarah Dryden-Peterson is my advisor. The working title of my dissertation is Language for an Unknowable Future: Refugee Children’s and Families’ Experiences with Language in Exile. My dissertation examines the relationship between language of instruction (LOI) and refugee children’s learning, identity development, and sense of belonging. It takes the form of a comparative case study (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017) of refugees’ experiences with language in two cities, Kampala and Nairobi, which sit within the national policy environments of Uganda and Kenya, respectively, and which differ in relation to both LOI and refugee integration policies. I am currently based in Kampala, Uganda, where I am conducting data collection and ongoing analysis. Following CIES, I will conduct further data collection and analysis in Nairobi, Kenya. The CIES New Scholars Dissertation Mentoring Workshop will help me to clarify my initial findings and analytical strategies related to the work in Uganda in preparation for continued data collection and analysis in Nairobi, Kenya.
Based on my review of the literature and initial interviews conducted at schools in Kampala and with stakeholders involved in refugee education in East Africa, I find that LOI policies and practices related to refugees fall at the intersection of contradictory bodies of research in the fields of language and literacy, and refugee studies. On the one hand, language and literacy research demonstrates the negative outcomes for learning and school persistence, as well as for identity-development and socio-emotional wellbeing, for students who are “submerged” at school in languages they do not understand (Benson, 2002). On the other hand, policy and research in the field of refugee studies highlights the benefits to refugee learners of being integrated into national school systems in the country of exile and the related long-term barriers that learners face if segregated into refugee-only schools (UNHCR & Global Monitoring Report, 2016) (Dryden-Peterson, Adelman, Bellino & Chopra, under review). Yet this integration into national schools usually requires that refugees are “submerged” in unfamiliar languages (Dryden-Peterson, 2016). I situate my dissertation at the nexus of these two bodies of research and center the experiences of refugee children and families, hoping my readers come to appreciate the central—and at times competing—pulls of language and integration in refugee education.
The following research questions guide my inquiry: 1) What is the role of LOI for refugees’ learning, identity development, and sense of belonging?; 2) What choices do refugee children and families make, or wish they could make, in terms of language use in schools and communities, and why? Do these expressed choices change depending on duration or trajectory of displacement?; 3) According to refugee students, families, teachers, and national stakeholders, what is the relationship between LOI policies and practices in Uganda and Kenya, and present and future opportunities for refugee children?
Within the two schools in Uganda, I am currently conducting interviews and a language mapping exercise with children in Grades 1-4, and I will do so at two schools in Nairobi as well. Tracing vertically, I will interview language and literacy teachers from both contexts and am conducting/will conduct observations of classes taught by these same teachers. In addition to conducting interviews with children and teachers, for a subsection of students, I will also interview their parents and conduct community observations of their language use outside of school, tracing the phenomenon of language beyond the walls of the classroom.
Finally, to situate the experiences of children, parents, and teachers within global and national policy contexts, I have interviewed/will interview stakeholders from the national government, NGOs, and multilateral organizations about policies connected to refugee integration and LOI. Using thematic analysis of policy documents (Rubin & Rubin, 2005) to place the interview data and observations in conversation with global and national policies related to language and refugee integration in the two contexts, I look vertically from policy design to school-based practices and community experiences; horizontally across locations with divergent policies; and transversally at the ways that refugees’ experiences vary by duration of displacement. I would be grateful to learn from the New Scholars Dissertation Mentoring Workshop as I seek to implement and improve this multi-sited comparative case study. Thank you for your consideration.

Author

• Celia Reddick, Harvard Graduate School of Education