When Youth Refugees (aged 18-24) enter the 'safe haven' of Western classrooms, they not only bring the baggage of socioemotional and academic problems resulting from interrupted or limited schooling, traumatic experiences and financial hardships they experienced in the past along with them, they also bring rich life experiences. These same experiences may, however, be viewed in deficit perspective in English-Only (or other dominant national language-only) mainstream settings. That is, alternative knowledge bases, and plurilingualism/pluriculturalism, may not be framed as strengths and resources in educational institutions, including at the postsecondary level. Given that 70% of Youth Refugees enrolled at the postsecondary level encounter different forms of racism, stereotyping, and bullying from teachers, peers, and host communities, the socioemotional and academic challenges these youths face do not stop at the proverbial schoolhouse door even after they resettle in the West, and neither do the classrooms beyond those doors necessarily represent 'safe havens' for them (Duran, 2019; Mendenhall et al., 2017).
The broad objective of this multi-site/multi-phase study is to contribute to the development of innovative policies and pedagogical practices that support Youth Refugees' language and literacy development through multimodal means (Early, Kendrick & Potts, 2015; Kress, 2000). The dual focus of the study described in our talk is to engage with and support these learners' multimodal literacy practices while also supporting their educators' professional development. The assumption is that once educators are better equipped to understand these learners' "funds of knowledge" (Moll, 2019), potential and needs, they may orchestrate instruction to meet those needs by situating their students as capable, "intelligent, imaginative and linguistically talented" (Cummins & Early, 2011, p. 4).
Key notions underpinning this study include Third Space, Identity Texts, decolonized writing, and counter-narratives (Bhabha, 1994; Cummins & Early, 2011; Smith, 2002; Taylor, 2011). Phase I of this study investigated educators' and other key stakeholders' views and experiences through an online survey and interview, leading to an ethnographic portrait of pedagogical practices and services available to youth refugees at the institutional level (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Phase II focuses on Youth Refugee participants. In this talk, we discuss the findings of student surveys and interviews, and the preparatory work we undertook to produce sample digital materials from which the participants could choose (e.g., personal websites, material memory projects, digital storytelling, digital resumés, etc.) to showcase their rich life experiences and multiple forms of capital. We also discuss the process by we scaffolded the Youth Refugees' product development (i.e., researchers worked one-on-one with participants over multiple sessions, supporting them in the English language, literacy and digital components of their product development, in the language/s of their choice). The results illustrate how multimodal products can indeed shine a positive light on Youth Refugees' identities, and that the cooperative online work environment created a safe shared space in which the participants could engage in decolonized writing. Furthermore, the results suggest that pedagogical approaches such as this, which draws on 4.0 technology, have the potential to support Youth Refugees' language, literacy and digital development while also rewriting/righting their stories. It is worth pursuing pedagogical practices such as this that contribute to dismantling discriminatory meta-narratives by linking people, information and digital supports, and meet the situated needs of real-world problems (Duran, 2019; Lorente, 2019).
