Learning to Be Literate: Issues of Pedagogy for Recently Arrived Refugee Youth in Australia

This paper focuses on issues of access to productive literacy learning as part of socially just schooling for recently arrived refugee youth within Australia. It argues that a sole reliance on traditional ESL pedagogy is failing this vulnerable group of students, who differ significantly from past refugees who have settled in Australia. Many have been ‘placeless’ for some time, are likely to have received at best an interrupted education before arriving in Australia, and may have experienced significant trauma (Christie & Sidhu, 2006 Christie, P. and Sidhu, R. 2006. Governmentality and ‘fearless speech’: Framing the education of asylum seeker and refugee children in Australia.. Oxford Review of Education, 32(4): 449–465. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Cottone, 2004 Cottone, C. 2004. Cultural chasm: The changing cultural and linguistic demographic in Queensland schools and the need for reform., Brisbane, , Australia: Youth Affairs Network of Queensland. [Google Scholar]; Miller, Mitchell, & Brown, 2005 Miller, J., Mitchell, J. and Brown, J. 2005. African refugees with interrupted schooling in the high school mainstream: Dilemmas for teachers.. Prospect, 20(2): 19–33. [Google Scholar]). Australian Government policy has resulted in spacialized settlement, leaving particular schools dealing with a large influx of refugee students who may be attending school for the first time (Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, 2004; Sidhu & Christie, 2002 Sidhu, R. and Christie, P. 2002. Sticks and stones will break my bones—and words will harm too. Australia's provision of education for asylum seeker children in detention.. Social Alternatives, 21(4): 11–16. [Google Scholar]). While this has implications generally, it has particular consequences for secondary school students attempting to learn English literacy in short periods of time, without basic foundations in either English or print-based literacy in any first language (Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, 2006 Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues. 2006. Late arrivals: The needs of refugee young people who resettle in late adolescence., Victoria, , Australia: Author. [Google Scholar]). Many of these students leave schools without the most basic early literacy practices, having endured several years of pedagogy pitched well beyond their needs. This paper suggests that schools must take up three key roles: to educate, to provide a site for the development of civic responsibility, and to act as a site for welfare with responsibility.