Nina Maadad

Schooling Syrian refugees in Lebanon: building hopeful futures

ABSTRACT Lebanon currently plays host to many thousands of refugees from Syria and Palestine. This paper describes research conducted with Syrian refugees on their experiences of schooling and education in Lebanon. Education offers new options and opportunities, and refugee’s value education as a means to improve their lives and secure their future. Not surprisingly, a good deal of refugee education literature highlights the importance of restoring or instituting lost or lack of knowledge, skills and competencies. However, as well as delivering technical proficiencies in literacy and numeracy, schools establish communities. They provide stability, safety, and security and construct communities of belonging. This paper is based on qualitative interviews with 98 individuals in Lebanon, including teachers, students and families associated with two public schools, two private schools and two informal schools in two different refugee camps. Drawing on theories of hope, this article focuses attention on the role of hope in achieving successful refugee schooling and education. The postcolonial approach adopted here bears in mind the effect of past conditions on present perceptions and future possibilities for the schooling of refugees.

“My friends are there”: Constructions of schooling of children of Filipino immigrants in South Australia‡

Abstract This article provides insights into children’s perspectives on schooling experiences following immigration. Albeit focusing on a small cohort of children, the theory and methodology in the article could well be applied to children of immigrants from other cultures. In exploring the primary school experiences of children of Filipino immigrants in South Australia, symbolic interactionism as frame of analysis and in-depth interviews as research method have been utilised. This study shows that children constructed perspectives on the school environment, academic work and interaction with peers and teachers. Symbolic interactionism asserts that children defined their situations, took perspectives and adjusted their behaviour in line with that of others. This paper argues that children’s perspectives were informed by socialisation to prior schooling in the Philippines and interaction with family, peers and teachers. This prior schooling experience, likewise, informed the children’s construction of primary schooling in South Australia.

Global academics moving down under: Living and learning a new academic culture

Abstract The tertiary education system has become an international phenomenon in recent decades, and, increasingly, Australian institutions are employing academic staff and postgraduate students from other countries. This now poses a number of challenges. International academics are reporting that cultural differences and stresses are impacting on their work. This has required an examination of both curricula and assessment practices in the tertiary sphere. Having academic staff from diverse backgrounds working in tertiary institutions arouses interesting patterns of interaction with other personnel, students, learning materials and learning contexts. This chapter examines a large number of international academics from Non-English Speaking Background (NESB), who are working in various Australian university faculties and disciplines. The study analyses the key factors influencing the NESB international academics’ employment. Seventy-five participants working in six Australian universities participated in this study.

Spoken register and Iraqi students in an English for academic purposes program

This article reports on the survey results of a longitudinal study over the period of a year and a half into the perceptions of and use of academic register in spoken discourse by 52 Iraqi students at an Australian university in two English for academic purposes (EAP) programs. The results of this study indicate that the participants valued the preenrolment course, and believed that it assisted them in the development of spoken register due to its content and explicit focus on register. The participants appeared to value the English for academic purposes component of their bridging course less in terms of satisfaction with content and instruction in general. However, the explicit focus on register in the bridging English curriculum appeared to affect satisfaction levels with this component of the instruction positively. There was also a clear correlation among variables related to satisfaction with content, satisfaction with instruction, motivation to use spoken register and perceived proficiency in relation to native and non-native speakers. The qualitative data in the survey and interviews indicate that the respondents came to a greater understanding of the varieties of register possible when speaking, and how to use those registers appropriately. They describe how the use of appropriate register is related to daily tasks as well as specific academic tasks and genres. This data supports content-based instruction around specific tasks and activities when teaching spoken register and other EAP content. It also supports the literature which suggests that adults tend to favor practical learning activities and materials. We therefore suggest that EAP courses that consist of various stages should be carefully designed to become sequentially more disciplinarily and practically focused to provide the students with the disciplinary and generic academic English skills and content they require.