Learning and living in a “new” space: Understanding school-university pathways for refugee students

This paper will present a cross-institutional collaborative study which focuses on the teaching, learning and cultural needs of students from refugee backgrounds which may support or otherwise limit their access to tertiary education. In particular, the study aims to develop models of university engagement with schools to prepare students of refugee background go on to tertiary education and to explore how this students can be supported in a new learning space for example, a university environment. With the increasing number of refugee students entering Australia recently, there is a strong case for universities to improve tertiary education pathways for this particular cohort of students. One means to do so is via school-university partnerships.

This presentation will discuss the approach of the study and the possible outcomes and outputs which include case studies, implementation guide, and site-based training workshops.

In line with the conference theme, and through exploration of important refugee student learning challenges and pathways, this paper contributes to one of the inquiry questions—how researchers, universities, and schools can engage with and respond to inequalities, complexity, and character of refugee students as a group in a local and global scale.