Gaining Insights into the Schooling Experiences of Refugee Students through Art and Accompanied Narratives

through Art and Accompanied Narratives Presenter: Alaa Azan, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Child Studies program Faculty Supporter: Carol Rowan   Recent scholarly writing concerning refugees and education are sometimes drawn towards deficit- perspectives. As a result, refugee families and children could be viewed as “Subjects of trauma” and “Vulnerable victims.” The dominant deficit-discourse is perpetuated by focusing on themes of war, trauma, and fear when examining children’s drawings. The current study aims to move away from this problem- based discourse and instead employ a strength-based approach to analyze the meaning of the school-based experiences of refugee students in Canada. The study will investigate the research question: How do a small group of refugee children, depict their lived school experiences in two Ottawa area community centers through drawings and verbal descriptions? The purpose of the study is to open space for discussions on the ways refugee students are viewing their schooling in Canada, building the capacity of educators, policymakers and everyone concerned with refugee’s success to serve them better. Guided by a post-structural theoretical framework, the study used drawings and descriptions to document refugee children schooling experience. Arabic speaking refugee students ages 6-12 were asked to draw “a typical day at school.” 18 Students were recruited from two community centers in Ottawa. The drawing activity took 20-30 minutes. Thematic analysis was applied to the data to help organize the emerging findings from the drawings and the verbal data. The results demonstrated the domination of themes on play and learning as reflecting the schooling experience and revealed the overall positive outlook of the participants towards their schooling in Canada.