Refugee centered education : critical theory in practice

The Refugee Action Support (RAS) program began in 2007 as a collaborative arrangement between the University of Western Sydney (UWS), the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF), and the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education and Training (DET). It aims to provide targeted literacy and numeracy support to humanitarian refugee students who have transitioned, within the previous two years, from Intensive English Centres (IECs) to mainstream secondary schools. Despite the fact that all refugee children who attend secondary schools are provided with English language instruction through enrolment in Intensive English Centres (IECs), time restrictions of four school terms in government funded centres result in only a partial development of language and acculturation skills. This poses a serious disadvantage to learning, particularly in light of the fact that the acquisition of academic English proficiency takes approximately four to seven years, and perhaps longer for individuals experiencing interrupted schooling (Brown, Miller & Mitchell, 2007).Furthermore, an increasing number of refugee children from Africa have had little, and at times, no formal schooling prior to their arrival in this country (Community Relations Commission, 2006); others are from highly oral backgrounds where written text is of little significance. As many parents/caregivers are unable to provide assistance to their children because of poor or limited English language skills, and as many refugee adults do not have adequate knowledge of the Australian education system, finding other means to support the learning of these refugee students is paramount to at least partially redress their educational disadvantage. As such, RAS was established within the Master of Teaching (secondary) program at UWS to train pre-service teachers in the vital areas of literacy and numeracy support for refugee students who have transitioned to high school from Intensive English Centres (IECs). This also meant that RAS in a way built the pedagogical and cultural understandings of the pre-service teachers who provide support through individual and/or small group tuition to refugee students in Western and South Western Sydney high schools.