Shawna Shapiro

Writing and Linguistics Programs

10/5/16

From Trauma to Resilience:

New Directions for Literacy

Education Research in Refugee

Resettlement Communities

Overview

Background

The critique: Deficit orientation

An alternative: Asset orientation

Examples

A few concerns/caveats

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Refugees and the “refugee crisis”

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The “single story”

The consequence of the single story is this:

It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity

difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.

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My argument

Deficit discourse creates a “single story” about

refugee-background students, emphasizing

what they lack, and overlooking

what they bring to resettlement communities

In order to resist this “single story,” in educational

research we must broaden our understanding of

Who (former) refugees are

What they need and want

What they can and could do with language/literacy

What they can contribute to our communities

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Sources: UNHCR 2015 Global Trends; UNHCR 2015 Resettlement Factsheet

Global Resettlement

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Why this matters

Resettled refugees consider themselves the “lucky few” who were able to navigate a complex bureaucracy to be approved for resettlement.

As a result, they are often highly attuned to

Social and rhetorical capital

Status and leadership

Institutional discourses– e.g., labels such as “refugee”

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(Myanmar)

Cases Inds % of total

Bhutan 83 189 58.15%

Burma (Myanmar) 3 4 1.23%

Burundi 1 5 1.54%

Dem. Rep. Congo 17 52 16.0%

Iran 1 3 0.92%

Iraq 1 1 0.31%

Nepal 1 1 0.31%

Somalia 20 70 21.54%

TOTAL 127 325

Vermont Arrivals: Oct 2015-Aug 2016

source: Refugee Processing Center https://www.wrapsnet.org

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Deficit orientation Effect on school policy/practice

Protectionism:

Refugee-background (RB)

students need safety and comfort

above all else!

Limited Schooling- “SLIFE”:

RB students have little or no

education background!

Low expectations:

RB students are lucky to be here!

They (and their families)

shouldn’t expect too much.

Long-term placement in “sheltered”

ELL classes; Social isolation

Default placement into

low-level/remedial classes

Grade inflation, Social promotion

Focus on HS graduation, rather than

college/career preparation

e.g., Bigelow, 2010; Callahan, 2012; Fritzen, 2011; Keddie, 2012; Mitchell, 2012;

McBrien, 2005; Pinson & Arnot, 2007; Roy & Roxas, 2011; Shapiro, 2014

The “single story”

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• Victimization

• Suffering

• Powerlessness

Framing of past

• Neediness

• Trauma/PTSD

• Education gaps

Framing of present

• Othering

• “Good enough” mindset

• Limited opportunities

Impact on future

DEFICIT ORIENTATION

ASSET ORIENTATION

What do you lack?

(deficit/need)

Where have you been?

Experiencing trauma

Surviving

Sympathy

Being helped

What do you bring?

(social/linguistic capital)

Where are you going?

Becoming resilient

Thriving

Dignity/Aspiration

Helping others

12 Shapiro, 2014; Shapiro, 2015; Shapiro & MacDonald, forthcoming

What does this mean for literacy education research?

Centrality of student voices and perspectives

What is their lived experience at school and in the

community?

What language/literacy resources and practices are

meaningful to them (and to their families)?

What can we learn from work they produce,

both inside and outside the classroom?

How might awareness of the above inform school

policies, curricula, and instruction?

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Resisting deficit discourse

(Shapiro, 2014; Shapiro & MacDonald, forthcoming)

“Do you guys accept

us—That we’re

different, that we’re

here, and we’re actually

trying to succeed? . .

.We came here to have

success in life!”

“Give me just one

minute, and I’ll impress

you!”

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“We’re bigger than test scores!. . . .Test

scores has nothing to do with who we are

and who we’re becoming as young men and

women.”

Understanding mismatched expectations

(Used with permission from

Hiorth & Molyneux, forthcoming)

Hsar Hsar imagines his first day of high school

“We [teachers] are so uniform on that

they must know Norwegian.”

BUT

“Our [researchers’] current findings

confirm that those refugees arriving with

no previous higher education may face

challenges as far as English proficiency

is concerned, and may have little chance

of succeeding in the Norwegian

educational system.”

( 15

(Dahl, Krulatz, &

Torgerson, forthcoming)

Cultivating Resilience and Agency

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Teacher assumptions about PTSD

(Holmkvist et al, forthcoming)

“Familial capital” and

“Community cultural wealth” (Yosso, 2005)

• Madina’s decision to become a teacher (Shapiro, under review)

• Fardowsa : “My mom was always on my side.”

• Botende: “I think for people to be successful they need

to have people that they’re afraid to let down. . .

That’s what did it for me.”

Building community

“I’m gonna just say, this is about

making family. . . if you bring all

kids together and you’re telling

them . . what is good for them. . .

. [saying] ‘This what you need to

be. We want you to have a family,

a future, and we’ll be working

hard on you’. . . . We just got to

bring more love to the

community.” -Najib

(Shapiro & MacDonald, forthcoming)

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Asset in the curriculum

Najib’s memoir Magnet school curricula in

Burlington School District

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“I started my own business in

the refugee camp at the age

of eleven or twelve. . . .

I always have been a

problem-solver..”

Asset in the curriculum (cont’d)

“Photovoice” projects

Used with permission from Papa, forthcoming

Sending clothes to family

in Guatemala.

My name in Khmer . . . I think.

A blessed string worn for

protection

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Multiliteracies

From Shafac’s screenplay:

BOY: I don’t want to fight you,

Muhammad [Ali]. I want to be you, to

be strong, to achieve, to dream and

keep the faith.

Cut to: inside of a bus. Camera moves

to boy, age eleven, traveling across

Africa.

MOTHER: (wiping off sweat) You

were fighting again.

.

Elizabeth’s use of Romanized

Karen in a multimodal composition

(Used with permission from Omerbašić , forthcoming; Crandall, forthcoming) 20

Heritage language learning

Nepali classes for children in Burlington and Winooski,

Vermont

*Special thanks to the Center for

Community Engagement, my RAs.

Hannah Sobel and Ojaswi Pandey,

and to Prof. Netta Avineri (MIIS).

Also supported by: 21

Complicating my own story…

The danger of romanticizing the “other”

o Are students gaining access to the

“culture of power”? (Delpit, 1988)

Can asset discourse become

empty rhetoric?

The importance of political context

“[I said] We are human beings as well, we have equal rights to

go to school like German youth. And he [social worker] told me,

‘there is no school for foreign youth.’”

(cited in Korntheuer et al, forthcoming)

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“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to

dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to

empower, and to humanize.”

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(Re)Humanizing Discourse

Thank you!!

For these slides and more, go to

http://sites.middlebury.edu/shapiro

Or email me directly:

sshapiro@middlebury.edu

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from Shapiro, S., Farrelly, R., and Curry, M.J [Eds].

Educating refugee-background students: Critical issues and dynamic contexts

(under contract with Multilingual Matters).

Crandall, B. R. “The future wasn’t always open”: Perspectives on writing from Somali-born

male youth with limited and interrupted formal education.

Dahl, A. Krulatz, A. & Torgerson, E., “The role of English as a foreign language in educating

refugees in Norway: A structuration theory analysis.”

Hiorth, P. & Molyneux, A. “Bridges and Barriers: Karen refugee-background students’

transition to high school in Australia.”

Holmkvist , E., Sullivan, K., & Westum, A. “Adult refugees with Post Traumatic Stress

Disorder learn Swedish.”

Korntheuer , A., Gag, M. Anderson, R., & Schroeder, J. “Educational Participation of

Refugee Youth in Germany. Case Studies in the multicultural urban centres Hamburg and

Munich.”

Omerbašić , D. “Students with refugee backgrounds creating digital landscapes of knowing.”

Papa, E. “Using Photovoice to uncover community cultural wealth.”

Adichie, C. (2009, July). The danger of a single story. TEDGlobal Conference. Oxford, England. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com .

Bigelow, M. (2010). Mogadishu on the Mississippi: Language, racialized identity, and education in a new land. Wiley-Blackwell.

Callahan, R. (2005). Tracking and high school English Learners: Limiting opportunity to learn. American Education Research Journal, 42(2), 305-328.

Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280-299.

Fritzen, A. (2011). Teaching as sheltering: A metaphorical analysis of Sheltered Instruction for English Language Learners. Curriculum Inquiry, 41(2),

185-211.

Hirano, E. (2011) Refugees negotiating academic literacies in first-year college: Challenges, strategies, and resources. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgia

State University, Atlanta: GA.

Keddie, A. (2012): Pursuing justice for refugee students: addressing issues of cultural (mis)recognition. International Journal of Inclusive Education,

16(12), 1295-1310.

McBrien, J. L. (2005). Educational needs and barriers for refugee students in the United States: A review of the literature. Review of Educational

Research, 75(3), 329-364.

Mitchell, K. (2012) Race, difference, meritocracy, and English: Majoritarian stories in the education of secondary multilingual learners. Race Ethnicity

and Education,1, 1-26..

Pinson, H., & Arnot, M. (2007). Sociology of education and the wasteland of refugee education research. British Journal of Sociology of Education,

28(3), 399-407.

Roy, L. A., & Roxas, K. C. (2011). Whose deficit is this anyhow? Exploring counter-stories of Somali Bantu refugees' experiences in" doing school."

Harvard Educational Review, 81(3), 521-542.

Shapiro, S. (2014). “Words that you said got bigger”: English Language Learners’ lived experiences of deficit discourse. Research in the Teaching of

English. 48(4), 386-406.

Shapiro, S. (2015). A slippery slope toward “too much support”? Ethical quandaries among college faculty/staff working with refugee-background

students. In E. Feurherm and R. Ramanathan (Eds). Refugee Rexttlement in the United States: Language, Policy, Pedagogy. Multilingual Matters.

Shapiro, S., & MacDonald, M. (forthcoming in 2017). From deficit to asset: Locating discursive resistance in a refugee-background student’s

written and oral narrative. Journal of Language, Identity & Education.

Yosso, T. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

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