Abstract
This qualitative study examines how an “international” high school in New York City responds to the needs of refugee students. It asks: What are the specific academic needs of secondary-level refugee students? How does one school meet their needs, and what challenges are encountered? To complement one-on-one semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, this qualitative study also entailed a participatory visual methodology through which students were provided digital or disposable cameras and asked to take photographs of the people, places and/or things that contributed to their schooling experiences. The exercise and resulting images provided students and researchers with a creative way to shape the project and address emerging issues. The findings document key school-based factors that contribute to academic inclusion of refugee and asylee students, including: educator support, care and encouragement; linguistic support from teachers; learner-centered pedagogical approaches; and flexible and responsive curricular approaches and assessment strategies. Refugees are generally grouped with other immigrants, with insufficient attention to their unique experiences and needs and thus inadequate services for refugee children. The findings from this study will help to remedy this gap and yield important insights regarding how to improve schooling for vulnerable populations in urban settings.
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Notes
Resettlement is the transfer of refugees from an asylum country to another state that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent settlement (UNHCR).
All student names have been assigned pseudonyms.
The Internationals schools graduate students with one or two Regents in addition to a portfolio. Some schools, like BIHS, are required to do English Regents. Other schools that have been added more recently (within the last 1–3 years) are required to do both English and Math Regents.
In 2003, only 33% of those English-language learners who took the exam passed the English Regents.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the generous financial support provided by the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund of The Reed Foundation, which made this work possible. We also wish to acknowledge financial support from the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Engagement Fund. Numerous graduate students contributed to this project at various stages and deserve special mention here. The students from Teachers College, Columbia University include: Christine Bell, Maria Bermeo, Kempie Blythe, Tonya Bushway-Flynn, Jacqueline Gaston, Rachel Maranto, Andrea Rosko, Anna Spector, Kendra Strouf, and Laura Wagner. The students from the University of Pennsylvania include: Shruti Bhat, Blair Sackett, Ruju Vyas and Sarah Stanton. We are most grateful to the administrators, teachers, and students who spoke to us about their experiences; their work and lives have inspired this piece, and we hope the article can make a contribution to improving refugee education in the United States.
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Mendenhall, M., Bartlett, L. & Ghaffar-Kucher, A. “If You Need Help, They are Always There for us”: Education for Refugees in an International High School in NYC. Urban Rev 49, 1–25 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-016-0379-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-016-0379-4