I hope you are safe and healthy. COVID continues to challenge all of us. You and others like you carry on to provide the learning that your stakeholders and students expect - adapting, adjusting, and improvising. We are all learning a great deal.
On that note, we are delighted to share the final evaluation of our US Refugee Educator Academy (access full report below).
- Despite the COVID pandemic, educators volunteered for this 9-month, online course plus coaching and a striking 43% completed it. The numbers defy the dismal 5% - 15% average completion rate for free online courses, and at a time when educators were overwhelmed with “emergency teaching” in response to the pandemic.
- The course had a significant impact on teaching practices, beliefs, and preparation to work with refugee students and their families, even for the most experienced educators working with refugee students. The biggest changes in beliefs were about serving the whole child, beyond just their academic needs, and the importance of recognizing and valuing each child and what they bring to the classroom and their learning.
- Participation in the course resulted in a significant, second-order effect of systems impact, with many participants taking action beyond their own classrooms. The education of each child should be viewed as a collective responsibility, which includes supports at all levels of the system. The study found that participants saw significant positive changes in supports for refugee education at the teacher, school, and district levels after taking the Refugee Educator Foundations of Practice course. Changes in these supports were significantly correlated with educators’ preparedness to work with refugee students and their families.
We continue to offer new courses and support you in developing yours. Below are a few highlights. We are especially excited about our courses being offered by the University of California San Diego! The team there worked with us to develop two videos about our work (see below). We send a big thank you to them. Please have a look.
Warm Regards,
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Dr. Diana D. Woolis, Director
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Find Us on University of California Television
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The Sustainable Learning Framework with Diana Woolis
A healthy learning ecosystem requires knowledge to be actively shared and implemented. Sustainable learning weaves together practices that allow not only for sharing, but for responding and implementing in our rapidly changing environment. The Center for Learning in Practice Director, Dr. Diana Woolis, explains the elements of the framework as well as its application. Watch the video here.
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Getting to know refugee students and their families
How can educators connect with refugee students and their families? Contributors to the Refugee Educator Academy from around the country share practical advice for engaging in meaningful and culturally relevant ways to promote learning, creativity and community. What the video here.
This program and other videos are available online on UCTV's website at www.uctv.tv.
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The Center for Learning in Practice commissioned RTI International to conduct an evaluation of the Refugee Educator Foundations of Practice course and learning community pilot project, offered to 3 cohorts over 2.5 years in 3 states - Arizona, Washington and New York. We are thrilled to share the evaluation report prepared by Dr Katherine McKnight and her team at RTI International.
Available here.
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Center for Learning in Practice's Refugee Educator Academy Program Manager Julie Kasper published a new article highlighting the work of the Refugee Educator Academy (REA) and its Refugee Educator Foundations of Practice program. This articles features educator voices from REA and the ways forward for refugee education in the U.S.
Available from the special issue of the NYS TESOL Journal that gathered invited papers from the NYS TESOL Conference in 2020.
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Refugee Educator Workforce Development for Quality Holistic Learning
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Funded by an international philanthropic organization, the Center for Learning in Practice is leading a multi-stakeholder collaborative effort to develop a competency-based quality holistic learning (QHL) framework for teacher professional development in refugee and displacement contexts. Currently, we are working with 19 educators as Teacher/Project Fellows in Kenya, Lebanon and Niger who are working with students of refugee/displaced backgrounds in their classrooms/learning centers. Professional learning curricula and materials—including courses, toolkits, assessments, and micro-credentials—will be developed, tested, and shared as OERs in English, Arabic, and French.
This 18-month global project aims to increase quality holistic learning outcomes, encompassing both academic achievement and social and emotional well-being, for children in displacement contexts through student-centered, whole child pedagogies. Learn more about this project here, and see the promo for the prototype of holistic learning analytics app developed for this project here.
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Continuing Events: Refugee Educator Academy 2021 Webinar Series
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Centering desire in refugee education research
Presenter: Araz Khajarian & Lisa Unangst
Saturday, August 14, 2021
8:00 am PST / 11:00 am EST / 3:00pm UTC
In this webinar, Araz and Lisa will share their research around refugee education through the lens of hope and desire. Araz's research interests include academic research in Syrian universities, refugees and higher education, the epistemology of quality in higher education and accreditation processes.
Lisa is postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent. Her research interests include higher education access and experience among displaced learners, as well as comparative constructions of "diversity."
Register for the series here.
Download the full 2021 webinar series schedule here. Access previous webinars, and related discussions, in our virtual community space here.
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