Children of Somali refugees in Australian schools: Self-descriptions of school-related skills and needs

Abstract

We examined self-descriptions of children of Somali refugee families in Australian primary schools, focusing on how children's school-related skills and needs relate to the interpretive frames of mainstream and ethnic cultures. Three groups of Grade 5 and 6 children (Somali, Disadvantaged, Advantaged) made choices among school-related skills, and rated feelings and needs for the transition to high school. Findings indicate a general goodness of fit between emphases of the mainstream culture and Somali children's choices (sport, maths), while reflecting some values of their ethnic interpretive frames (rejecting art, music). Gender stereotypic differences did not interact with culture. Children's computer-based choices provide a basis for bringing together studies of development and acculturation, and for differentiating between refugee status and socio-economic disadvantage.

Examining the psychological well‐being of refugee children and the role of friendship and bullying

“…Dodds et al . () undertook a study on the children of Somali refugees in Australia, and similar to this study, peer bullying was not an issue amongst these children. Since the refugees in the current study actively participated in afterschool activities revealing a willingness to integrate in their new educational setting, this could have significantly limited the likelihood of being peer bullied or at least prevented the likelihood of it from being significantly different from British children.…”

Academic Achievement and Psychosocial Adjustment in Child Refugees: A Systematic Review

“…In total, 11,997 school-aged child refugees aged 5-12 years were included. The studies were conducted in Australia (Bryant et al, 2018;Dodds et al, 2010;Driver & Beltran, 1998;El Habir et al, 1994;Hanes et al, 2019;Lau et al, 2018;Mares & Jureidini, 2004;Ziaian et al, 2013Ziaian et al, , 2018, Canada (Rousseau et al, 1996(Rousseau et al, , 1998Usman, 2012), Costa Rica (McCallin, 1988), Denmark (Montgomery & Foldspang, 2006;Nielsen et al, 2007), Eritrea (Wolff et al, 1995), Ethiopia (Metzler et al, 2019), Finland (Sourander, 1998), Germany (Buchmüller et al, 2020), Greece (Bilanakis et al, 1999;Papageorgiou et al, 2000), Italy (Pellizzoni et al, 2020), Lebanon (Sim et al, 2018), the Netherlands (Goosen et al, 2014;Wiegersma et al, 2011), South Korea (Nho et al, 2019), Sweden (Goldin et al, 2008), Saudi Arabia (Al-Eissa, 1995), Thailand (Annan et al, 2017;Son, 1995), Turkey (Çeri & Nasiroglu 2018;Eruyar et al, 2018;Nasiroglu et al, 2018), Uganda (Paardekooper et al, 1999), the United Kingdom (O'Shea et al, 2000), and the United States (Ballard et al, 2018;Birman & Tran, 2017;Chiu et al, 1989;…”

Computer-Assisted Expressions of the Perspectives of Refugee Children in Resettlement

“…The medium allowed us to develop culturally sensitive materials and to draw on the everyday idioms and skills of children's Lawrence/Kaplan/Dodds DOI: 10.1159/000496076 cultural groups and Australian schools to assist their self-expressions (e.g., Dodds et al, 2010;Lawrence, Collard, & Kaplan, 2013;Lawrence, Kaplan, & Collard, 2016. Sensitivity to children's backgrounds and recognition of refugee experiences are shown through introducing children to generic images of refugee children colored blue and matter-of-fact descriptions of their experiences, for example, of finding it hard to sleep at night and having relatives still in other countries.…”