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Overcoming the ‘Hidden Injuries’ of Students from Refugee Backgrounds: The Importance of Caring Teacher–Student Relationships

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Challenging Dominant Views on Student Behaviour at School

Abstract

The schooling experiences of refugee background students prior to being resettled in Australia significantly shape their transitions into Australian schools. This chapter presents a case study of six young people from Sudanese refugee backgrounds. With a focus on discipline and student-teacher relationships, I argue that the previous ‘hidden injuries of schooling’ experienced by the students continued to shape their experiences of school in Australia. I suggest that the students’ experiences of corporal punishment and authoritarian teachers at schools in Africa resulted in ‘hidden injuries of schooling’ that need to be acknowledged and understood to enable the students to adjust to, and succeed at schooling in Australia. The students’ experiences of positive teacher-student relationships in Australia resulted in an improved sense of security, care and belonging which enabled them to overcome these ‘hidden injuries’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Furlong drew on the term ‘hidden injuries’, originally coined by Sennett and Cobb (1972), to explore the emotionality of class in the US.

  2. 2.

    The New Arrivals Program provides specialist English and learning support to newly arrived refugee and migrant students. I will describe it further below.

  3. 3.

    I use the term ‘mainstream’ to refer to schools and classes that are not part of the New Arrivals Program or Intensive English Centres. However I use this term with a degree of caution. Use of terms such as ‘mainstream’ can have exclusionary effects for those who are undertaking specialist programs such as the New Arrivals Program. However this is the term that is most frequently used in this setting, so I use it for clarity.

  4. 4.

    One participant described ‘cheating’ to improve his performance on tests by utilising available resources such as the multiplication tables printed on the back of his exercise book.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

    Melanie Baak

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  1. Melanie Baak
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Correspondence to Melanie Baak .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Australia, School of Education, South Australia, Australia

    Anna Sullivan

  2. University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Bruce Johnson

  3. University of South Australia, Adelaide, Magill, South Australia, Australia

    Bill Lucas

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Baak, M. (2016). Overcoming the ‘Hidden Injuries’ of Students from Refugee Backgrounds: The Importance of Caring Teacher–Student Relationships. In: Sullivan, A., Johnson, B., Lucas, B. (eds) Challenging Dominant Views on Student Behaviour at School. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0628-9_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0628-9_10

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0628-9

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