Knowing and learning in everyday spaces (KALiEds): Mapping the information landscape of refugee youth learning in everyday spaces (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 2017
The development of information literacy and learning practices in everyday spaces is explored.Data for the study was collected using photo voice technique. Data analysis was conducted using photos and analysis of group transcripts. Participants describe how they tapped into social, physical and digital sites to draw information in the process of (re) forming their information landscapes, building bridges into new communities and maintaining links with family overseas. Media formats were identified according to their appropriateness as fit for purpose, suggesting that the enactment of information literacy was agile and responsive to need at the moment of practice. The results indicate that everyday spaces provide opportunities to develop information literacy practices, which support informal learning. Findings of the study conclude that information literacy is played out in a series of digital, vernacular and visual enactments, which shape the information landscape.
Refugee Youth Leverage Social, Physical, and Digital Information to Enact Information Literacy
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 2017
A Review of: Lloyd, A., & Wilkinson, J. (2017). Tapping into the information landscape: Refugee youth enactment of information literacy in everyday spaces. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0961000617709058 Objective – To describe the ways in which refugee youth use everyday information to support their learning. Design – Photo voice technique, a process by which the population under consideration is provided with cameras and asked to visually document an aspect of their experience. Setting – Social agency in New South Wales, Australia Subjects – Fifteen 16-25 year old refugees resettled from South Sudan or Afghanistan Methods – Three workshops were conducted. In the first, participants learned how to use the cameras and the protocols for participation. Between the first and second workshops, participants took several photographs of places, sources and types of information that were personally meaningful. In the s...
Connecting with new information landscapes: Information literacy practices of refugees
Journal of …, 2012
Purpose: The purpose of the research reported in this article is to understand how refugees learn to engage with a complex, multimodal information landscape and how their information literacy practice may be constructed to enable them to connect and be included in their new information landscape. Methodology: The study is framed through practice and socio-cultural theories. A qualitative research design is employed including semi-structured face-to-face interviews and focus groups which are thematically analysed through an information practice lens. Findings: Refugees encounter complex and challenging information landscapes that present barriers to their full participation in their new communities. Social inclusion becomes possible where information is provided via sharing through trusted mediators who assist with navigating the information landscape and information mapping, and through visual and social sources. Research limitations/implications: The study is local and situated and therefore not empirically generalizable. It does however provide rich, deep description and explanation that is instructive beyond the specific research site and contributes to theory building. Practical implications: The study highlights the role, and importance, of social and visual information sources and the key role of service providers as mediators and navigators. Governments, funders and service providers can use these findings to inform their service provision. Originality/value: This is an original research paper in which the results provide practical advice for those working with refugees and which also extends theories of information literacy practice as an information practice.
Researching the Role of Digital Media in Enabling Educational Participation of Young Refugees
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020
This paper presents an ongoing joint ethnographic research project by the University of Cologne and the Leuphana University Lüneburg, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), focusing the role of digital media in facilitating young refugees‘ educational participation (“Bildungsteilhabe Geflüchteter im Kontext digitalisierter Bildungsarrangements”, 2019-2022), The project aims at reconstructing factors that enable educational participation of young refugees in digitally-mediated educational environments. In three extended phases of ethnographic field work (participant observations) and artefact analyses of digital media in non-formal educational contexts such as youth welfare institutions (e.g. residental groups, pedagogical family assistance and youth-cafés) formal educational contexts (e.g. schools, vocational training etc.) and informal spaces (e.g. family, peer activities etc.) implicit and unplanned as well as explicit and pedagogically planned us...
2020
Using PhotoVoice, a participatory visual methodology, this research explored the settlement experiences of refugee youth who have exited high school and a program designed by a school board in Alberta to support their language and academic needs. Newcomer youth encounter profound academic and social stresses as they attempt to create a new identity and sense of belonging in their new home. By engaging the notion of place as a framework, this project examined what it means for refugee youth to recuperate a place of belonging. Gruenewald (2003) suggests that understanding our relationship to place can be profoundly pedagogical. The youth began by capturing their perspectives on belonging with photos; they collaboratively analyzed them for common themes, audio recorded narratives to accompany key images and then shared this assembled digital product with recently arrived newcomer youth. By focusing on the notion of belonging rather than barriers to settlement, the youth reflected on the actions that were instrumental in their effort to inhabit their new home. The findings revealed that at the core of the youth's efforts, connecting to people, especially in school, in addition to connecting to the natural world, fostered feelings of well-being and belonging. Educational implications include recommendations for schools and teachers supporting newcomer youth. Schools that offer welcoming and focused language programs with teachers who have trauma sensitive training provide a foundation for older newcomer youth. Meaningful relationships among teachers, students and families generate trust that in turn creates safe places for student needs and voices to be understood. Giving experienced youth opportunities to reflect on and share their perspectives with other youth fosters confidence and awareness for both groups.
Journal of Documentation
Purpose This paper presents the research findings of the “Syrian New Scots’ Information Literacy Way-finding practices” research project, funded by the Information Literacy Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The purpose of this paper is to explore the information needs of “Syrian New Scots” (the preferred name for refugees in Scotland), their habitual and adaptive information literacy practices and the barriers and enablers they encounter within their new socio-cultural setting via their interactions with people, tools and processes. Design/methodology/approach Primary data were collected via interviews with three Local Authority Leads for Syrian Resettlement and focus groups with Syrian New Scots in three geographical locations in Scotland: two rural areas and one urban. Syrian research subjects were also involved in a drawing exercise that helped to contextualise the findings. Findings The main information needs expressed by participants rev...
Online Learning, 2023
Previous research about refugee students' experiences with online learning has focused on the challenges faced by refugee youth, their families, and schools without addressing what strengths families might bring to this type of learning. Further, while previous research has touched upon refugee youth and their families' substantial digital literacies, these strengths have not been widely applied in support of online learning. In this paper, we advocate for a holistic, asset-based approach to support and develop refugee families' digital literacy practices for use in online learning experiences. In doing so, we hope to countermand the suggestion that online learning is something refugee families can never benefit from or will only benefit from under an extremely narrow set of conditions. We begin by reviewing previous research about refugee populations and their digital literacies. Then we share Bronfenbrenner's socio-ecological framework for thinking about shared responsibility in digital and online learning that does not rely on individual students, families, schools, or communities as independent actors. Next, we apply the socio-ecological thinking that we propose to online learning for refugee families across various systems and share theoretical, design, and pedagogical implications. We conclude by offering some implications for research and reiterating the importance of asset framing and shared work in serving refugee and other vulnerable populations well.
United by language, literacy and learning : creating spaces in schools to support refugee literacy
Prism a Journal of Regional Engagement, 2015
This paper discusses the Refugee Action Support program, which is a program of literacy support for newly arrived refugee high school students in Australia. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that while some refugee students do achieve success in schools, many refugee students arriving in Australia under the humanitarian program fail to attain a level of education that will give them access to and allow them to participate in tertiary education. Severe disruptions to education are a consistent feature for these students making current levels of support inadequate to meet the needs of refugee background students who are still on their language learning journey as they make the transition from primary school to secondary school. The Refugee Action Support program is an example of a service learning initiative that facilitates spaces where refugee youth can negotiate language forms and practices in consultation with pre-service teachers and experienced teachers and explore the application of language-in-context through the scaffolding and situated practices arranged by a competent English Second Language instructor.
Analyzing Human Behavior in Cyberspace, 2019
This chapter provides practical recommendations for employing the affordances of cyberspace as tools for learning and development among young refugees undergoing migration. Building upon empirical work that examines the role of language in cognitive development among immigrants, we emphasize the pedagogical uses of narrative in the process of shaping the experiences of young refugees on the road and giving meaning to their everyday activities. The educational practices described here are grounded in the spiral curriculum pedagogy which views learning as a process of iterative conceptual development mediated via context-embedded activities. Following a review of research on the cognitive benefits that emerge from developmental activities across diverse cultural contexts, we provide a set of recommendations for structuring narrative-based educational activities that engage and activate the rich transnational experiences of young refugees in the process of migration, and transform these experiences into learning.