The population of Belgian refugee centers faces multiple challenges during the initial reception and integration in our society, where text-based communication and high literacy skills are the norm. Unsurprisingly, then, insights into the nature of their literacy skills are called for. However, literacy is often conceptualized in binary terms, rather than as a broader, culturally defined spectrum of functional literacy and differing literacy (Dehaene, Cohen, Morais, & Kolinsky, 2015; Perry, Shaw, Ivanyuk, & Tham, 2018; Vagvoelgyi, Coldea, Dresler, Schrader, & Nuerk, 2016). In this presentation, we aim to improve knowledge of the challenges this population faces and how to approach them by gaining better insight into low literacy. For this purpose, we developed an assessment tool to monitor their literacy skills. In our presentation we will describe the quantitative and qualitative results from this project. We explain how different aspects of our study, such as interviews, observations and test results, gave shape to an assessment tool fit for this unique context. Also, we summarize what it taught us about the extent and nature of low literacy among asylum seekers. Finally, we present what low literate asylum seekers as well as the professionals surrounding them view as challenges and possible approaches. We reflect on how the particularity and diversity of our participants impacted research design, our understanding of the outcomes and our conceptualization of literacy and its assessment. |
