Following an investigation into the effectiveness of secondary schools’ parental engagement strategies, Dr Sharon Wagner and Professor Loshini Naidoo from Western Sydney University have warned that a lack of awareness about the refugee experience can result in problematic communication and lowered expectations being set by schools.
The pair are concerned that an overarching focus on the barriers faced by refugee parents means that current research and policy might entrench the idea that engaging with this cohort involves only remedial measures – and lowly standards.
“I think there is a need for training in how and when to communicate with parents from different socio-cultural and educational backgrounds,” Naidoo told MCERA.
“Despite the rhetoric of schools partnering with parents from different backgrounds, it is all too often the case that the views of parents are rarely sought, and teachers tend to have difficulties relating to parents who come from outside their cultural frame of reference.
“There needs to be a shift away from viewing refugee background parents from a deficit perspective, recognising the strengths they bring to the school community.”
Drawing on data from focus group interviews with teachers and parents in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania, their research suggests that an entirely different system of engagement is needed.
This is because although parents from refugee backgrounds tended to have high aspirations for their children’s educational success, they were not always aware of our system’s expectation of active parental involvement, the research concluded.
“…we heard a wide range of parents’ attitudes,” Wagner explained.
“Some felt disempowered by a different educational system and its expectations, while others stress the importance of active parenting, and highlighted the benefits of parents initiating contact with the school.
“The idea that parents must display specific actions and behaviours to be considered engaged can lead to labelling refugee background parents as ‘uninvolved’ unless they display it according to Australian norms.
“This can overlook the strategies these parents use to support their children’s learning at home, such as creating a positive and encouraging family environment where education is a priority and helping children learn to be respectful and well-behaved…”
In her previous study on refugee parent engagement in Tasmanian schools, Wagner found students were often used as the conduit between school and home.
Some teachers expressed concerns that information from their schools could be ‘overwhelmingly long and heavy’ and ‘full of jargon’, while an increasing reliance on digital communication platforms was found to disadvantage those parents without the linguistic, technological, and financial means to access this information.
“When schools do not communicate in ways refugee background parents can understand, that often leads to a reliance on the children themselves to translate or interpret,” Wagner said.
“Many of the refugee background parents depended on their children to translate school documents. But, as parents and educators pointed out to us, this means the children are effectively deciding what the parents need to know.
“The parents get the messages through the children’s filter, so, for instance if the child is in trouble at school, they might avoid passing certain things on.”
Many parents who don’t speak English, or struggle to do so confidently, often rely on interpreters to overcome the language barrier – but issues of equity and access endure here, the researchers found.
“If they can afford to, they may even hire interpreters themselves, in order to communicate with school staff,” Wagner said.
“The availability of support services for refugee background parents in Australian schools is also influenced by government resettlement policies and may vary depending on the location, in rural and regional settings, an interpreter may not be an option at all.”
Naidoo said this served as a reminder that policy decisions “must ensure equitable access to services, like translators and bicultural workers, for all refugee background parents, regardless of where they resettle”.
Teachers also spoke of their ‘deep concern’ that many refugee background parents did not attend parent-teacher interviews.
“Some parents expressed a preference for something other than parent-teacher meetings altogether,” Wagner reported.
"They put forward the idea of workshops that could focus on building knowledge around homework, English, and computer skills to help them support their children’s learning.
“That could be a way of addressing a few issues at once. You can establish contact and engagement between the parents and different subject teachers, meet the parents' interests and needs, and also directly assist with struggles with language proficiency and limited education.”
Wagner said ‘fresh perspectives’ were needed to better harness the positive power of parental engagement.
“...We argue that the starting point needs to be the educators and parents learning from each other,” she noted.
"This is an opportunity not to be lost, because there is a need – not just on-going, but growing – for refugees to find success in the Australian education system.”
