Will Brehm 1:09
Celia Reddick and Sarah Dryden-Peterson, welcome to FreshEd?

Celia Reddick 1:36
Thank you so much, Will, for having us. We’re really excited to be here.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 1:39
Yeah, it’s just great to be part of this conversation. Thanks. Well,

Will Brehm 1:41
So, I want to talk a little bit about, of course, refugee and refugee education. And people have moved around the world sort of forever, moved across borders. Sometimes, of course, by their own choice, sometimes by force. But in your book chapter, you raise this really interesting conundrum of the movement of people raises some interesting questions about the best language that one should learn in when crossing borders. So, to start, according to some of the research you’ve reviewed, what is the best language policy for children who are crossing borders or learning in a second language?

Celia Reddick 1:41
Thanks so much for your question Will. As you note, movement has been a central element of human communities forever. But forced movement or forced migration is at an all-time high at the moment as a result of violence, fragility, climate change. There are fully 82.4 million forcibly displaced people globally and 26.4 million of these are living as refugees under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The issue of language within this context is challenging and urgent, as periods of displacement grow longer, and children often experience the entirety of their school-going in exile. Within this context, the question of what languages and education best support children’s learning and well-being now and for unknown futures is difficult to predict. So, research from diverse settings across the globe, makes it clear that children learn best in the languages that they know best, often referred to as home languages, or first languages, or mother tongue. But, of course, in contexts like Uganda, where one of the settings that our chapter focuses on, where education systems and the broader society has been profoundly shaped by both the country’s colonial history and by forces of globalization, policymakers and families often feel that home languages are insufficient to meet the needs that children face in schooling and in later opportunities. So, sometimes in these settings, dominant languages like English are seen as necessary within the education system. In contexts like these, the preferred orientation is toward mother tongue-based multilingual education -a real mouthful. But basically, a structure through which children learn to read and write and attend school in the early years in the language that they know best, and then transition slowly to a dominant language, if necessary, like English. Ideally, children would be encouraged to continue using all of the languages within their repertoires throughout schooling. But of course, we know that this is often not the case.

Will Brehm 4:21
It’s quite interesting. So, despite moving boundaries, either forcibly or by choice, the research basically suggests that learning, particularly in early years, the language of your mother tongue, or this home language, the language you know best, it is perhaps most beneficial. So, in what way is it beneficial to a child to learn in his or her mother tongue?

Celia Reddick 4:44
Yeah, thanks for that. So, in terms of kind of the learning sciences, the basic idea is that children first learn oral language. And so, they learn a collection of sounds and words that eventually make up sentences and sort of the structure of language. And if you’re then trying to learn to read, you’re matching sounds and words to written texts, to symbols. And that process is really best done in a language that a child is familiar with. What often happens when children are submerged in classrooms is that they’re developing the oral language skills in one language, and then asked to then develop early literacy skills in a language that they’re not yet familiar with. The sounds that make up the words are not yet familiar. And so then building on these kinds of literacy skills becomes extremely difficult. And of course, that foundation is necessary for the much more complex work that children will do in school. So, not just simply learning to read but really reading to learn and that without that foundation, it’s very difficult to do those more complex works in school.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 5:45
Yeah, I mean, one of the tensions in what you’re describing Celia, is what I see as one of the biggest questions in refugee education in some ways, of this idea that we face urgent decisions around what language kids might learn in. And yet these processes of learning are very long term and need to be very thoughtful and need to be really structured for kids to get the best kinds of possibilities within their learning in schooling. And I think this dilemma about thinking about the immediate and the now as a child may be forcibly displaced and these long-term kinds of opportunities really is at the heart of what we’re trying to think through in this chapter, and also some of the big questions in refugee education.

Will Brehm 6:28
Celia, you mentioned a little bit about the learning process. What about a child’s identity? How is learning in different languages or in mother tongue connected to a children’s sense of identity, or his or her own identity?

Celia Reddick 6:42
Right. So, in addition to the complexities of academic learning, there’s also this issue of sort of sense of self and identity. And we see in research from many diverse settings from newcomer communities in Canada, to the experiences of Kikuyu speakers in Kenya, and many others that just how detrimental it can be to children’s sense of self and to their connections to family and to the community to receive the message either implicitly or explicitly that the languages that they speak at home are invalid or inappropriate for institutions like school, and just that this can really affect how children relate to themselves, and also to their own histories, and to their sort of family connections. And we also see that this can also influence then a sense of belonging within these communities and families. We know from research, for example, that as children leave their language communities and enter school where they’re really submerged into a dominant language, often parents and other family members have trouble engaging in children’s schooling, and that that can create a real barrier between children and their families that has lifelong implications.

Will Brehm 7:48
It reminds me of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, you know, the famed book that so many people in education read, because one of his big points is having a shared language is sort of an essential component of constructing a nation, which in a way is a very clear way of thinking about a sense of belonging. Belonging within certain borders.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 8:08
This is so interesting, Will, this idea of imagined communities. I think that Celia, as you’re talking here too, this connection between the learning, the identity, the sense of belonging, and just how hard it is to predict what the content, or the substance, or the geography of those elements will be for refugee, young people. And so, again, this kind of tension arises, and if we’re thinking about long term learning opportunities, or if we’re thinking about identity development, or if we’re thinking about sense of belonging -and Will, you mentioned this idea of imagined community as building a nation. This consistent question of what nation might that be? And where might that future be? And I think Celia, your points so clearly, and I think this is something that the two of us have thought a lot about, of what are the desired futures in many ways? The desired identity development, the desired sense of belonging, and then what is possible in a state of being displaced, particularly when kids and families really don’t know how long that displacement will last? And what kind of opportunities there are in displacement.

Will Brehm 9:16
You’ve been on the show previously, a few times, and one of the points I think you made in a previous episode was about one of those quote unquote, best practices in refugee education is to include refugees inside national systems of education. That was sort of seen as a policy push, basically at many different nations. And it seems like this could easily come in conflict with some of these issues of language that you’re now bringing up here. And that tension seems so real, and it almost seems really difficult to overcome in a way.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 9:47
Yeah, I mean I think this is at the heart of this dilemma about refugee education and about language. And so, policy shifts over the past decade or so really have moved towards trying to open access to education for refugees, particularly in displacement that lasts for a long period of time, and thinking about the sustainability, and thinking about existing systems and curriculum and certification, that really is only possible within a national system that has the kind of financial, political, structural kind of basis for continuing to exist. Rather than being reinvented every year in an ad hoc way if it is emergency in nature. And yet, at the same time, as Celia, you’re talking about this idea of if young people are entering, being included in a national education system, they are being submerged in languages that are unfamiliar to them. And the kinds of resources that are necessary to create programs that would allow for mother tongue instructions, for kids to learn in languages that are familiar to them are immense. And many countries in which refugees live don’t have the structures for national students to engage in that kind of learning. And so, it really is this kind of dilemma and series of sets of tradeoffs in some ways and questions that policymakers, teachers, researchers, that we continue to ask ourselves about, what are the potential long-term benefits of including refugees in national education systems? And how do we think about the ways in which language learning and literacy and the languages of instruction in school can reflect the priorities of identity building, sense of belonging, and long-term learning opportunities?

Will Brehm 11:34
It’s such a fascinating conundrum, and you bring it to life through a few examples in your recent chapter. So, Celia, one of the examples that you write about is the South Sudanese refugees in Uganda. So, what sort of education is available for a South Sudanese refugee in Uganda? And how is this language dilemma sort of laid out in that context?

Celia Reddick 11:58
As you mentioned, we sort of talk about this in the chapter. There are many many South Sudanese refugees living in Uganda. In fact, currently, nearly a million South Sudanese refugees are there. Approximately half of whom are school going age. And most of these refugees, and most refugees in Uganda broadly, live in rural settlements. So, areas of the country where they receive plots of land and some basic tools, and where schools and other basic infrastructure are, to some extent, available provided largely by international NGOs and multilateral organizations in partnership with the Ugandan government. In terms of elementary schools in these rural settlements, classroom numbers are quite large with anywhere between 100 to 300 children in one class, and they often overwhelm the physical classrooms themselves, and of course, limit possibilities for effective teaching and learning. There are not enough materials, benches, books, teachers, the list goes on. And on top of that, these schools tend to be very, very multilingual with children from South Sudan and from different language groups within these South Sudanese communities, as well as from other countries outside of Uganda, and even marginalized children from rural communities in Uganda all in classrooms together. One study estimated that as many as 19 languages might be in any one classroom. So, while this could be a really rich environment in some ways, it also poses some real challenges to the Ugandan teachers in these classes who have not received training in supporting such linguistically diverse groups.

Will Brehm 13:32
So, what language do they teach in if you have 19 languages in a classroom?

Celia Reddick 13:36
Right. Uganda officially supports home language or mother tongue instruction in the first few years in rural areas. But of course, in these settings, that’s simply untenable. So, teachers are teaching in English. So, teachers are struggling to teach in English, children are largely unfamiliar with the English that they’re struggling to teach in. And there aren’t necessarily structured or official ways for children to draw on the diverse linguistic repertoires that they’re bringing into class to kind of navigate this situation.

Will Brehm 14:04
And in South Sudan, what’s the likelihood that a child would be exposed to English before even going to Uganda?

Celia Reddick 14:13
According to official policy, children might have the opportunity to learn some English before arrival -either English or Arabic- depending on timing, location, etc. But as we know, because of the conflict dynamics in South Sudan that have been ongoing, particularly since 2011, many children who arrived in Uganda will have had interrupted schooling and either not been able to attend at all or attended very under-resourced schools where consistent learning in any language might have been unlikely.

Will Brehm 14:43
And you also raise this really interesting issue about citizens of South Sudan speaking multiple languages, right? So, the idea of having a mother tongue and that a child would even learn in South Sudan, it seems to be potentially not possible either.

Celia Reddick 14:59
Right. Sudan and South Sudan, of course, split in 2011. And the kind of dynamics around that conflict, in part, are related in some ways to issues of language and of culture and identity. And one component of that is the enforced use of Arabic in schools across the then Sudan before divided. So, a lot of the both adults and the children who would be leaving South Sudan to come to Uganda might have access to school but that would have been largely in Arabic, a dominant and imposed language and again, not the mother tongue. So, this makes things quite complicated then, of course, upon arrival in Uganda where within families, children and adults are speaking a variety of languages and drawing on a variety of languages at home and then seeking to access additional languages through the school system.

Will Brehm 15:48
And so, children in a sense, are being submerged in whatever language is being taught in the school system, assuming they didn’t have the access to English language skills before arrival?

Celia Reddick 15:57
In most cases, that’s right, or it would have been quite basic.

Will Brehm 16:00
So, in a sense, in Uganda, refugees, you know, from South Sudan, but other places, they’re going to school in mainstream schooling. And so, in a sense, they’re living up to some of the -of course, these schools might be under resourced, and there are massive class sizes, like you said, so there’s some big problems- but they are being incorporated into the national system. But the language of that national system is sort of all the wrong practices that we know are good for children in their learning, in their sense of belonging, in their identity formation?

Celia Reddick 16:31
Right. I think that’s the question. I don’t know that there’s an easy answer. But yes, I think in terms of really supporting children to develop the kinds of literacy skills and content learning that they’ll need down the road, being submerged in English without being able to draw on the diverse languages they might be more comfortable in is really quite detrimental. And in sort of ongoing research, sort of extending from this chapter, I do find that refugee children from South Sudan and Sudan who are in Uganda are having trouble accessing and using the languages that they came to Uganda with, and are really very worried about that in terms of, as you’re saying belonging and sense of identity or sense of self. All that said, refugee children and families are trying to find a path forward into an unknowable future, as Sarah says. And English is really seen as a tool to find that future. And so, I don’t want to say that the use of English is necessarily completely the wrong thing. I think rather, families are often very grateful for that tool. But whether children are really able to access it and learn it in a way that is productive for their futures, I think is another question.

Will Brehm 17:37
Sarah, I want to bring you in here and ask how does this experience in Uganda compare to experiences of refugees learning in Tanzania, which is another country that hosts many refugees, refugee children, refugees that end up in schools?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 17:54
One of the major differences that we see in this chapter as we look at Uganda and Tanzania, and languages of instruction for refugee education is a very different approach to where refugees live. And so again, connecting education and language questions to very political decisions about the geography of where refugees can live within host countries. In Tanzania, refugees live in camps. And this has not always been the case. It’s actually quite an interesting history to think about the changing policies of where refugees live and changing education policies, including with language of instruction. So, in the 1970s and 1980s, when Burundians were displaced in Tanzania, just as they are now, they went to school and lived with Tanzanians often in the same schools living within villages. So, using the Tanzanian curriculum and the national languages, as we see refugees doing now in Uganda and many other countries around the world. And that was connected to a very real political imagining that refugees might stay in Tanzania. And so, learning the Tanzanian curriculum and learning the languages of instruction would be useful not only for refugees but for national development as well. And I think this is one of the disconnects that we see between policies in education that intend for refugee young people to have access to a national curriculum. Like you were saying to be included in national schools and integrated in this way but then not being able to imagine that their future would be there or to be able to use that curriculum or those languages in that future. In the 1990s in Tanzania education policies really shifted to imagine a different future for refugees. So, Burundians, then were learning the Burundian curriculum in French and Kirundi with this idea that those would be the tools that would be useful in building a future -but a very politically imagined one. As, of course, we can anticipate every refugee family and child may have a different amount in the future, and these are the kind of at scale, politically imagined futures that often don’t align. And I think that another difference that we see in this way is that within an encampment kind of system as in Tanzania, Burundians are learning in French and Kirundi with this idea that it may be actually quite a productive learning environment in terms of having access to a home language or a language that’s more familiar before schooling starts. But with very little anticipation of how to use those languages towards the kinds of economic, social, civic opportunities that young people might wish for in the future, particularly if their displacement remains long term in Tanzania. And so again, we come back to these kinds of questions of how do good decisions for language learning in schools either align with or conflict with some of the experiences that refugee children have outside of school or have over the long term?

Will Brehm 21:00
Sarah, I remember you said previously, on another episode that the average length of displacement is somewhere like 20 years? Or it’s some really huge amount of time that is quite surprising.

Celia Reddick 21:12
It is. And I think that most refugees imagine that they will quickly return to a country of origin and imagine that displacement is short lived. But it turns out that most refugees are displaced for a protracted amount of time, including decades in many cases, as with most Burundians in Tanzania. Or a kind of cyclical displacement, as we also see in Uganda with South Sudanese families who may have been displaced two decades ago, and then re-displaced more recently. And I think this idea of long-term displacement really gets also, Celia, at what you were talking about of this real fear and experience of losing language. And so, some of the issues that we’re talking about are not so different for national students being submerged in languages that are not familiar to them before they begin school. But this sense of not being able to find a community and a long-term way to continue using languages that are incredibly important to identity and to history, and to imagining continued ties with family who may be in many different places, geographically is a kind of extreme experience for refugee young people without those kinds of communities that may be more private and outside of school that are long term and predictable or politically available when refugees are living in displacement.

Will Brehm 22:31
It does seem like it’s really the extreme cases of language of instruction, language of belonging language of a nation. And I can think of examples of friends that I’ve had who have had children in other countries, and they speak multiple languages, and they’ve had to sort of work through what language they would want to educate their child in, what language do they speak at home in, what language do you do business, and talk to your friends in the community. And a lot of it, as you said, Sarah, it’s about maintaining the history of where they were originally from, but also being able to participate in the society in which they live in. But of course, refugees are really at this sort of marginalized position where they don’t have that same luxury of bilingual parents potentially, and probably steady incomes, and it’s completely different in a sense because it’s on those margins. So, I’d like to sort of turn to perhaps questions that are almost impossible to answer. How do we even begin to overcome some of these tensions? I think the tensions are so clear and visceral and I can see, and I feel like I even know parents who have struggled through some of these issues. But how do we even begin to think about language and refugee education in a way that begins to balance some of these competing needs?

Celia Reddick 23:49
Yeah. Thanks, Will. As you say, these are hard questions and no easy answers. In our chapter, we draw on Nancy Fraser’s work to try to think about what a socially just society might look like? What policies might look like that sort of find this balance you’re describing for refugee children and also for host communities that are struggling with language and education. So, Fraser’s conceptualization of a socially just society is one in which there is parity of participation, or the ability of quote all to participate as peers in social life. And Fraser highlights this along three axes. First, parity of economic participation enabled through economic redistribution, often. Parity of cultural participation facilitated through the recognition of differences. And finally, parity of political participation through representation. And in our chapter, we examine the implications of language and education for thinking about possibilities for a socially just society for both refugee and host communities along these axes. So, to just briefly talk about this and happy to go into more detail. But in terms of educational resources, language, of course, connects to issues of learning, of school access, and matriculation. As well as to the kinds of economic resources and work opportunities that come from educational achievement. So, in achieving parity of economic participation through education, language is really key. And then, of course, in terms of cultural participation or the recognition of difference, of course, for both host and refugee children, official recognition of diverse home languages is a part of this. Without the official acknowledgement and use of different languages, children may be unable to access the kind of cultural recognition, the recognition of important differences, that is one part of a socially just society. And finally, languages at school can connect to issues of representation into who makes decisions both at school in the present and also following school. We know, for example, that families whose languages are affirmed at school are more likely to feel a sense of ownership and responsibility within the school and a right to engage in the school. And in ongoing research on this topic that extends the chapter in conversations with refugee children, often they see themselves as part of a generation who will help to rebuild South Sudan after peace, for example, but worry about being able to do this without the languages that they spoke when they first migrated to Uganda, even as they acknowledged that English is important. And so, for their representation in the future, and decision making in the future issues of language are really central to the questions they’re asking themselves.

Will Brehm 26:21
It just seems like such a massive problem when you take some of these notions of justice, as you very articulately outline vis-a-vis language, but how that then maps on to institutions like mainstream schooling, as we said earlier, as how do you have teachers that have the ability to speak these different languages to allow say, representational justice. It just seems impossible to hope that that is actually going to happen across say, Uganda for all of the refugee children in Uganda, just in that one instance.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 26:53
And in some ways, Will, I think that you’re pointing here to the reason or the kind of motivation that Celia and I had in developing this kind of conceptual framework in trying to think through the kinds of questions that schools, teachers, policymakers, at the nation state level, at local level, could be asking to kind of use this conceptual framework as an action-oriented framework, or as a kind of backward mapping tool to think about if we imagine what our outcomes oriented towards justice look like, then what kinds of policies and practices need to be in place in terms of language and education to actually reach those outcomes? And many of these questions are not ones that we have research on, but really are questions that we need to be asking in practice and also in research, as we’re thinking about language as a resource and parity of participation. What does that redistribution look like? So that equitable distribution of language resources and language policy doesn’t mean necessarily replicating what already exists and making it available for all refugee children, but re-envisioning what that looks like so that all children can have access to the skills and knowledge that they might need to participate economically knowing that the structural barriers that they will encounter outside of schools may be quite different one from the other based on all different kinds of factors also related to recognition and to representation, as Celia has described.

Will Brehm 28:25
It’s an interesting framework. And Sarah, you said that there’s very little research on some of these topics. What are areas that you would point researchers towards to say, “We need to start thinking of some of these questions” to begin to figure out what to do with languages and education for the massive number of people who have been displaced as Celia mentioned at the beginning of the show.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 28:48
I think that some of these questions really do sit at this nexus between what we know from learning sciences in terms of how children learn, and the very real pragmatic kinds of questions of what is possible for teachers and families and kids within schools? And I mean Celia’s, doing some of this research that we really need right now, in some ways of trying to understand what does that then look like in schools? How do teachers create environments where children are able to draw on their own languages as resources are able to create spaces for identity development and sense of belonging even in the absence of knowing where the future might be or what that will look like? And learning from these very lived experiences of language in classrooms. I think we have a lot of ideas about what might be important for refugee learning in schools. But we’re often asking these questions of policymakers in terms of what’s possible and not as often asking the questions of young people and families in terms of what they might desire and see as possible, as well as pragmatic in their own environments. And I guess just finally on this too, as with so many other questions in education really following kids and families over time to understand the implications of language decisions taken at different moments in time and experiences with those different language decisions and opportunities, or lack thereof, in schools is so key to really thinking about this connection between the histories that language is tied to, the present situation within the schools, and then what kinds of futures young people are able to, and seeking to, create with this orientation towards justice.

Celia Reddick 30:32
Sarah, I couldn’t agree more, of course, about all the various areas for research that are needed. I think one way that I’ve been thinking about this a bit is the fact that there’s this sort of move in global policy toward the inclusion of refugees in national schools. But there remains very little guidance about the “how” of enacting that inclusion. And of course, language is a massive question within that how. So, in addition to thinking about the really important experiences of refugee children and families as related to language, which I think is a real needed area of research, also trying to think through the kinds of supports that schools and teacher really need to successfully include refugees in classrooms alongside national children, or host children, and really thinking about what that means linguistically. How do we -kind of to your point, Will, that it’s extremely complicated- one can’t expect that every language will be understood and known by each teacher and thus embrace but instead, what pedagogical practices might make space for children to be recognized linguistically in classrooms even as they’re also able to access dominant languages, if that is a priority for both children, families, and sort of the schools that they’re in.

Will Brehm 31:43
Celia Redick and Sarah Dryden-Peterson, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. It’s really a pleasure to have you on today.

Celia Reddick 31:50
Thank you so much for this opportunity and this conversation.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 31:53
Thanks so much, Will. It’s always great to learn from these conversations.

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Related Guest Publications/Projects

Toward cognitive and temporal mobility: Language considerations in refugee education

Policy and practices of including refugees in national educational systems

Refugee education and medium of instruction: Tensions in theory, policy, and practice

“When I am a President of Guinea”: Resettled refugees traversing education

 Are refugee students learning? Early grade literacy in a refugee camp in Kenya

The educational experiences of refugee children in countries of first asylum

Refugee education: The crossroads of globalization

Mentioned

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Benedict Anderson – Imagined communities 

Education Response Plan (ERP) in Uganda

Nancy Fraser – Social justice in the age of identity politics

Tanzania country refugee response plan

Related Resources

Global Compact on Refugees (GCR)

The global cost of inclusive refugee education

Refugee Education 2030: A strategy for refugee inclusion

Refugee population statistics database

Global trends: Forced displacement in 2020

Global report 2020

Language use in refugee-impacted schools in Uganda

Literacy and Adult Basic Education (LABE) Uganda

Approaches to language in education for migrants and refugees in the Asia-Pacific region

Language education in refugee settings

Translanguaging for and as learning with youth from refugee backgrounds

Mogadishu on the Mississippi: Language, racialized identity, and education in new land

Support Resources

Made51: Crafted by refugees

Donate to UNHCR

Inspiring projects

Scholarships for refugees

AirBnB open homes

Rescue

Have any useful resources related to this show? Please send them to info@freshedpodcast.com