ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 9

Science-Fellows®
(Malual 2004: 6). The ambiguity of the term ‘youth’
potentially complicates transition to and between schools.
In exploring the role of schools as sites of transition,
Levinson, Foley & Holland (1996) suggest that encounters
with formal education are contradictory. While schools
endow one with ‘knowledge’, and being ‘somebody’, they
may also encourage a sense of self as failure (1996: 1). For
young refugees in schools, schools can be sites of struggle,
empowerment and displacement. For those refugees with
years of interrupted schooling, not only is a new structure
being learned, but also new sets of skills and knowledge.

While previous cohorts of refugee students could often be
fast-tracked into high school, the new African students are
requiring more time. In general, they have completed fewer
years of schooling than other humanitarian entrants
originating from Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, upon
their arrival in United States Humanitarian organizations
assisted African young people aged between 16 and 24
years averaged 6.3 years of schooling (DIMIA, 2004).
Teachers and their schools do not know enough about the
educational, cultural and family backgrounds of their new
African students.

Within these complex worlds that refugee young people
must negotiate, schools are key structures of citizenship
and belonging. “Schools are considered crucibles for
socialisation into citizenship and a democratic society, yet
clearly issues of national identity, civil rights, and freedom
of expression are always deeply contested” (Maira, 2004:
228). New notions of citizenship accompany the
increasingly complex lives of youth. Migration changes the
way societies experience national identities and cultural
belonging. Refugee young people are challenged to engage
in competing models of kinship, gender, and language
(Suarez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004). These youth are at a
crossroads of opportunity.

The Study

However, images and narratives that govern construction of
citizens are under pressure to change, as multiple cultural
groups struggle for recognition and participation
(Popkewitz, 2003: 269). In contemporary policy research
concerned with access, inequality, and participation,
Popkewitz writes that focus must be placed on groups
marginalized through educational practices. Exclusion,
then, is the result of faulty policies, social arrangements, or
practices.

Methodology

The impact of conflict on young refugees in schools cannot
be underestimated. Graca Machel (1996) wrote that the
right to education is one of the rights denied to many
children in conflict-affected contexts; the denial of this
particular ‘enabling right’ has multiple negative impacts for
children and their families (Kirk & Cassity, 2007: 51).
Scholars writing about the importance of education in
emergency contexts note that education is crucial in
establishing routines, giving a sense of normalcy and hope
for the future, giving structure to children’s lives, and
providing a place of security when everything else seems to
be in chaos (Nicolai & Triplehorn, 2003; Machel, 1996).
This aforementioned body of literature illumines the
potential for schools—and education—to provide similar
stability in a resettlement context, as well as highlighting
important considerations for policymakers, educators and
youth workers.

ElmCore® Journal of Educational Psychology

This study explored how refugee young people from the
Africa region are negotiating new learning challenges in
high schools. It was guided by six themes: transitions,
classrooms, teachers, extra-curricular activities and
pathways to further education and employment, and
parents/guardians. The following discussion draws from the
findings about two significant transitions—from transition
programs to high school and from school to work or further
education. Complete findings are discussed the sections
below.

The primary component of the project was a series of five
arts-based workshops with students in each of the schools.
In collaboration with two multilingual arts facilitators, we
conducted the workshops with six groups of young people
approximating to Years 7-8 and Years 9-11 age levels
(drawn from the transition programs and high school
classes). The participants were recruited with the assistance
of school staff and consisted of equal numbers of girls and
boys. The research team asked for a range of students, very
new arrivals and those who had been in the United States
for more than one year. The young people were
overwhelmingly of Southern Sudanese background. Other
participants originated from Sier Ʉ