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Assignment 2: Critical Analysis of Research

The Refugee Action Support (RAS) Program is run by a partnership between Western Sydney
University (formerly The University of Western Sydney), The Australian Literacy and Numeracy
Foundation, The New South Wales Department of Education, and local High Schools. The program
has supported the educational needs of High School students of refugee backgrounds through a
tutoring program with preservice teachers attending Western Sydney University being the tutors,
since 2007 (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010). Research papers on the program consistently laud its success
(Ferfolja, 2009, Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010, Naidoo, 2012, Naidoo, 2013). Naidoo (2013) refers to
some “initial ‘teething’ problems,” (458) and Ferfolja and Vickers (2010) note that the program had
limited success for students who did not attend tutoring sessions regularly and that students in the
program largely remained unable to grasp very advanced concepts such as genre and register,
however this is then cited as an unreasonable expectation, given the students’ circumstances. None
of these are actual failings of the program.

Refugee Action Support: Crossing Borders in Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Literacy Teaching in
Secondary Schools in Greater Western Sydney (Naidoo, 2012) provides the most comprehensive
analysis of the success of the RAS program in the eyes of its participants. In comparison, Supporting
refugee students in school education in Greater Western Sydney (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010)
presents a deeper insight into the observations of the teachers coordinating the RAS program within
schools and presents some quantitative data on the results of the program but acknowledges that
this data has limitations. The two articles share the conclusion that the RAS program is a great
success but we will examine their respective insights with an interest in their implications for
teaching practice.

Both articles found that the success of the RAS program was derived in part from the informal
nature of the students’ relationships with the preservice teachers who were tutoring them, which
helped them be more open about any difficulties they were facing, and partly from the capacity of
the tutors to work with the students on a one on one basis (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010, Naidoo,
2012). This reflects on the refugee students’ plight in mainstream classrooms. Naidoo (2012) quotes
one tutor saying; “often the students that do RAS are too reluctant to go to the classroom teacher,”
(272) and another saying; “RAS is different from mainstream groups where the teacher doesn’t have
contact time with them,” (272). Unsurprisingly, Ferfolja’s 2009 paper and Naidoo’s 2013 paper
corroborate these judgements that the success of the program stems from the positioning of the
tutors as the students’ equals and Ferfolja and Vickers (2010) refer to “a general distrust of
individuals ‘in authority,’” amongst refugee students (153), which is the flip side of the same coin.
Embarrassment at what they might perceive as their own shortcomings is also cited as a cause for
these students’ non participation in mainstream classroom environments in Ferfolja’s 2009 paper.
Watkins (2011) illustrates the difficulties faced by classroom teachers trying to implement inclusive
pedagogies for the benefit of migrant students and students who are the children of migrants. She
goes on to illustrate how material supplied to teachers aiming to teach in a culturally inclusive
manner may be entirely counter-productive in the sense that it encourages not only essentialising
the cultures in question but simplifying content delivery in the classroom to the point of trivialising
it, which is not only counter-productive, but also patronising (Watkins, 2011). Hence it is no surprise
that the refugee students in the RAS program have difficulties in the mainstream classroom (Ferfolja,
2009, Naidoo, 2012, Naidoo, 2013). Creagh (2016) relates the difficulties faced by refugee students
participating in NAPLaN, because of the category; Language Background Other Than English. A
diagnostic tool, this category was intended to signpost for policy makers the children in need of
support but Creagh makes visible the shortfall of this category, being that the students making up
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the category, as a whole, achieve average results. Thus the group of students within the category
who are in greatest need of support (refugees) are hidden from the eyes of those who can change
their circumstances (Creagh, 2016). We can extrapolate that issues such as this are the reason
initiatives like RAS are necessary, because the system as it is does not address the needs of these
learners.

Ferfolja and Vickers’ paper (2010) includes no explicit literature review section, but references
almost as many sources as Naidoo (2012) – which includes a comprehensive literature review.
Ferfolja and Vickers (2010) does, however, make reference to much pre-existing research in its
Introduction and the section entitled Experiences of African humanitarian refugees which precedes
the Methodology section, thus the purpose of a literature review is served, if not explicitly. In both
cases the papers are building upon existing research, the authors cite previous writings on the same
subject, including several of their own (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010, Naidoo, 2012). Naidoo (2012)
states; “There is a demand for research into improving pathways for students from refugee
backgrounds especially for those with severely disrupted schooling.” (268). She goes on to say that
none of the existing research “articulate[s] pedagogical strategies to inform teaching and learning.”
(Naidoo, 2012, 268). This is where the paper is aimed. An American study is referred to but the use
of an international study is justified by the unique nature of the study in question (an equivalent
study is unlikely to exist within Australia) and a degree of inter-relatability when comparing migrant
student populations in two first world countries (Naidoo, 2012). Both papers ably outline the existing
knowledge of the subject and the new approaches to be taken to expand this knowledge base.

Both papers include a section entitled Methodology. Naidoo (2012) details the approach taken by
researchers to interview a cross section of the participants in the RAS program, including school
leaders (Principals and Deputies), coordinators of RAS programs, RAS tutors (preservice teachers),
classroom teachers of students in the program and the students themselves. This is a
straightforward but very comprehensive approach and promises a complete picture of the program
and its results, however, the approach of Ferfolja and Vickers (2010) actually asks a rather pressing
question of Naidoo’s approach (2012). Ferfolja and Vickers state from the outset that their
approach, involves interviews with only the coordinating teachers because of the tendency of
refugee students to be fearful of authority, which could have some effect upon their responses if
they were to be interviewed (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010). This is an interesting point of difference
and it does put Naidoo’s approach (2012) into question. The students were however interviewed in
groups in Naidoo’s study (Naidoo, 2012), which may have served to alleviate this issue somewhat,
although no mention is made of this being part of the reasoning for interviewing the students in
groups. Ferfolja and Vickers’ approach (2010) includes interviews before the commencement of a
cycle of the program and follow up interviews upon completion of the cycle. They also implemented
two quantitative studies, one of which made use of ESL scales that the coordinating teachers were
already familiar with to assure consistency. Unfortunately, however, these quantitative studies
largely failed due to low levels of completion of the questionnaires by the coordinating teachers
(Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010).

Interview responses in both articles affirm the success of the RAS program. The interviewees
emphasised the positive outcomes and almost universally accredited the success of the program to
the fact that the students felt they could identify with the tutors because they weren’t fully fledged
teachers, making them more like peers, with whom the students felt they could share their
difficulties with schoolwork without feeling embarrassed (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010, Naidoo, 2012).
Naidoo (2012) includes responses from tutors saying they benefited from the program as well, that it
was effective professional development and they felt they could use the skills they had learned in
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the program in the mainstream classroom. Naidoo’s 2013 paper explores this outcome of the
program and its implications in greater depth. As has already been mentioned, the closest that
Ferfolja and Vickers come to finding a negative outcome of the project was the unsurprising
discovery that there was less improvement in results among the students who didn’t attend the
program regularly because it isn’t compulsory (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010) This is in fact an argument
that the program is effective, not a shortcoming. This observation is consistent across the
quantitative data gathered and the qualitative interview responses. The quantitative measures have
already been mentioned as having limitations due to the small sample sizes involved. Ferfolja and
Vickers (2010) acknowledge this limitation, saying; “Sample sizes in this quantitative component of
the study are small, so no attempt has been made to use statistical tests that might lead to broader
inferences based on these data.” (154). However, it is noted that the quantitative data, limited
though it may be, supports the qualitative interview responses, saying that the students in the
program have improved academically somewhat in proportion to their levels of attendance. Ferfolja
and Vickers’ (2010) circumspect approach to results stemming from a small sample size are in
keeping with the principles of analysing quantitative research outlined in chapter five of Gall, Gall, &
Borg (2015).

Naidoo (2012) concludes by mentioning that schools cannot meet the needs of refugee students on
their own and goes on to say that RAS and programs like it demonstrate how it is possible to meet
the needs of these diverse learners. Ferfolja and Vickers (2010) take a different approach, framing
the situation as a failure of the system to keep pace with a changing society, that RAS is succeeding
because it is providing a service that isn’t there to begin with but which should be there to begin
with. The paper goes on to explain that the current system which has newly arrived migrant children
spending one year in an Intensive English Centre (IEC) was intended for children who were already
literate in the language of their countries of origin, which is largely not the case for refugee students,
for whom this arrangement is thus inadequate:
Teaching pre-literate children to read is quite different from teaching English reading skills to children who are fluent
readers in their mother tongue. Yet there has been no change in the original policy under which support for new arrivals
was limited to just four terms, or 12 months, in an IEC. (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010).

The implications of this research for teaching practice are twofold. Firstly, a coordinating teacher
remarked in Ferfolja and Vickers’ (2010) study that refugee students “drown in the classroom.”
(155). However, one of the tutors interviewed in Naidoo (2010) says that they have used the skills
they learned through RAS tutoring, outside the program, indicating that it is possible for classroom
teachers to learn how to “rescue” refugee students “drowning” in the mainstream classroom
environment. Learning this may very well be achieved by participation in such programs as RAS.
Secondly, these studies explicitly demand changes to the way High School aged refugees are
transitioned into the Australian schooling context because, despite its success, the RAS program
remains a stopgap solution.
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Bibliography

Creagh, S., (2016) ‘Language Background Other Than English’: a problem NAPLaN test category for
Australian students of refugee background, Race Ethnicity and Education, 19:2, 252-273.

Ferfolja, T., (2009) The Refugee Action Support program: developing understandings of diversity,
Teaching Education, 20:4, 395-407.

Ferfolja, T. & Vickers, M., (2010) Supporting refugee students in school education in Greater
Western Sydney, Critical Studies in Education, 51:2, 149-162.

Gall, M.D., Gall, J.P., & Borg,W.R. (2015). Applying educational research: How to read, do, and use
research to solve problems of practice. (7th ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: Pearson Education, Inc.

Naidoo, L., (2012) Refugee action support: Crossing borders in preparing pre-service teachers for
literacy teaching in secondary schools in Greater Western Sydney, International Journal of
Pedagogies and Learning, 7(3): 266–274.

Naidoo, L., (2013) Refugee Action Support: an interventionist pedagogy for supporting refugee
students’ learning in Greater Western Sydney secondary schools, International Journal of Inclusive
Education, 17:5, 449-461.

Watkins, M., (2011) Complexity reduction, regularities and rules: Grappling with cultural diversity in
schooling, Continuum, 25:6, 841-856.