Abstract

Promoting Positive Pathways Through Education for Refugee and Recent Immigrant Young People

Author(s)

Abi Brooker -University of Melbourne

A\Prof Jeanette Lawrence -University of Melbourne

We present an innovative way of asking bi-cultural young people from refugee and recent immigrant backgrounds about their educational pathways into tertiary studies.

We are studying the positive pathways that have brought refugee young people into tertiary studies. This reverses the negative, deficit focus often used in working with refugee young people.

Students work in an interactive computer environment that asks them about the challenges and opportunities they experienced along their educational pathways, and about their commitments to their family culture and Australian culture, and their explorations of their family culture and Australian culture.

The program uses a variety of tasks, including open-ended questions, ratings, multiple-choice responses, and animations. It was designed with extensive piloting to be culturally sensitive, attractive, and appropriate for bi-cultural young adults. The program allows young people to work privately and at their own pace. By following the process of a natural conversation, it allows participants to explore their thinking and respond reflectively and candidly.

This interactive process yields qualitative and quantitative data that are immediately ready for analyses. By focusing on the positive strategies used by bi-cultural young people to get themselves into tertiary education, this approach assists the development of educational policies and practices that can assist other refugee and immigrant young people to find positive pathways through educational challenges.