Recently Resettled Refugee Students Learning English in US High Schools: The Impact of Students' Educational Backgrounds

Christopher T. Browder

This chapter reports on a quantitative study that examined the English learning of 146 US high school English learner (EL) students with a focus on 35 recently resettled ethnic Chin refugees from Myanmar. The goals were to understand how students' educational backgrounds influenced their learning of English and to identify the most useful variables for understanding the challenges facing recently resettled refugees and students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE). The study had three main findings: (1) the Chin students learned English much more slowly than other groups; (2) most of the Chin students could be identified as SLIFE, but very few had low first language (L1) literacy; (3) some of the variables used to identify students as SLIFE were associated with slower English learning, but were not very strong or reliable predictors, due to high variability. These findings suggest that there must be other, important reasons why some students learn English more slowly than others, and that students characterized as SLIFE may not have all the same characteristics and needs. This study broadens our understanding of SLIFE and provides insights for school systems considering how to best serve recently resettled refugees.

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a movement to fill a gap in research on second language acquisition that is particularly relevant to refugee-background students (Bigelow & Watson, 2012) – namely, our lack of understanding of how EL students' educational backgrounds impact their learning of English. A number of researchers have shown that prior schooling, literacy or other educational experiences in students' first languages influence their learning of English as an additional language in high school settings (e.g. Brown et al., 2006; Klein & Martohardjono, 2015; Thomas & Collier, 2002).

In 2014, I conducted a study to build on this research, examining the relationship between high school EL students' educational backgrounds before emigrating and their rates of English learning once in the United States. Specifically, I wanted to know whether SLIFE learned English more slowly than other EL students. In the course of this study, I had to determine the best way to categorize students as SLIFE. Based on definitions of SLIFE drawn from the existing literature, I began to look at a group of EL students and identify variables related to their educational backgrounds. As a result of that study, I encountered a group of students whom most people would consider to be SLIFE based on how the data had set them apart: recently resettled ethnic Chin refugees from Myanmar. Most of them had experienced interruptions in their schooling, and on average, they were learning English more slowly than the other EL students in their school system. This study delves further into the trends among the Chin students in my study in order to better understand the impact that refugee-background students' educational backgrounds have on their English learning.

Literature Review: Recently Resettled Refugee Students and SLIFE

At present, the educational literature has a tendency to conflate recently resettled refugee students and SLIFE. For example, some studies on recently resettled refugees refer to them as students with 'truncated formal education' (cf. Gahungu et al., 2011) or 'limited formal schooling' (cf. Walsh, 1999), but do not disaggregate the data for those with more previous formal education from those with less. Similarly, some of the educational literature on SLIFE is based on the experiences of teachers working with groups of recently resettled refugees, but it is not clear from this literature whether all of those students actually had documented interrupted education or verified low L1 education and literacy (cf. DeCapua et al., 2010).

Admittedly, most US school systems still do not collect enough information on EL students' educational backgrounds to systematically or accurately identify students as SLIFE (Advocates for Children of New York, 2010). In fact, one study found that students identified as having 'interrupted formal education' by their school system often did not have such interruptions (Klein & Martohardjono, 2006). At present, US school systems generally conduct interviews and collect transcripts during the federally mandated Home Language Survey to determine which newly arrived EL students have experienced interruptions in their education (Zacarian & Haynes, 2012), but very few administer objective tests to determine which have low L1 literacy or limited academic content knowledge, as such tests are only now being developed (Klein & Martohardjono, 2015;...