Understanding Refugee-Background Students

Including voices that are often silenced or not heard, this book argues that all linguistic funds of knowledge should be recognised and valued in the host countries

This edited book presents stories and research focusing on literacies and language learning practices - across multiple modalities - in refugee communities from different countries, including Afghanistan, China, Iran and Myanmar, among others.

The chapters draw upon sociocultural perspectives on literacies, which emphasize the wide range and multiple literacies that bilinguals or multilinguals use in their real-life contexts. The authors engage with a wide range of commonly occurring questions in research and teaching with refugee communities, from how researchers can ethically engage refugees in research projects to how refugee background students can be supported in sharing their stories, and from how home languages can be maintained in the classroom to how refugee background students engage in language learning within their own families and communities.

Together the chapters underscore the importance of recognizing refugee-background students and families as multilingual learners whose skills enrich educational spaces.