Education for Resettled Refugees & Asylees in NYC

This qualitative and multi-modal study examined the educational needs of refugee students in New York City schools, how schools were meeting those needs, and what school institutional factors best facilitated students’ academic achievement? Youth participants engaged in participatory visual methods, through which they took pictures of people and/or places they felt helped them be successful in school. The images that resulted from the participatory visual methods approach were also used to guide a deeper discussion about educational needs during focus group discussions. The study found that refugees were generally grouped together with other immigrants, with insufficient attention to their unique experiences and needs, which resulted in inadequate services.

Book Chapters

Bartlett, L. & Mendenhall, M. (2022). Strategy 15: After-school and summer programming. In M. Bajaj, D. Walsh, L. Bartlett & G. Martinez (Eds.). Humanizing Education for Immigrant & Refugee Youth: 20 Strategies for the Classroom & Beyond (pp. 141-146). Teachers College Press.

Articles

Mendenhall, M. & Bartlett, L. (May 2018). Academic and extracurricular support for refugee students in the US: Lessons learned. Theory into Practice, 57(2), 109-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2018.146991

Bartlett, L., Mendenhall, M. & Ghaffar-Kucher, A. (2017). Culture in acculturation: Refugee youth’s schooling experiences in New York schools. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 60, 109-119. (Special Issue: Cultural and Academic Adjustment of Refugee Youth in Educational Settings). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.04.005

Mendenhall, M., Bartlett, L., & Ghaffar-Kucher. (2016). “If you need help, they are always there for us”: Education for refugees in an international high school in NYC. Urban Review, 49(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-016-0379-4