Since the refugee crisis of 2015 we have increasingly been dealing with questions of how to best include children with refugee backgrounds in school and daycare. This question has most recently been re-actualized with the war in Ukraine. In a few months more than 20.000 refugees from Ukraine have arrived in Denmark - many of them children. Teachers and pedagogues play a vital role in the reception, inclusion and wellbeing of children and families with refugee backgrounds. This can be a complicated task that requires special skills, knowledge and training. In ITIRE, a transnational European Erasmus project, we have been working on refugee education and training of practitioners from different fields. In this webinar we will focus on disseminating this knowledge and engage in dialogue with other researchers and professionals working within the field of refugee education and inclusion. We will focus on the challenges and possibilities in working with children with refugee backgrounds in a Danish context but also include presentations from different international settings to give an insight into both local and international pedagogical strategies. Questions that will be addressed include: How do we best design educational practices to meet the needs of children with refugee backgrounds? How do we include children in existing communities and collectivities with peers? How do we take their experiences of war, uprooting and loss into account as professionals? How do we as practitioners ensure safe and responsive teaching environments for all students?

Zoom link: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/66939983032

Programme

13:00-13:10  Welcome to the participants and introduction
                       Fabio Dovigo, Aarhus University

13:10-13:40  Perspectives on refugee education from the ITIRE project

• Austria. Michelle Proyer and Seyda Subasi, University of Vienna
• Norway. Gry Paulgaard , University of Tromsø
• UK. Julie Wharton & Wayne Veck, University of Winchester

13:40-14:00  Refugee Education in Denmark: Examples and reflections

• ”The refuge” – on experiences of non-belonging and pedagogical strategies of inclusion. Iram Khawaja, Aarhus University
• Questioning Care: The encounter between refugee children, their families and Danish day-care institutions. Susanne Bregnbæk, University College Copenhagen

14:00-14:10  Break

14:10-15:00  Exploring educational strategies in and beyond Europe

• Educating Refugee Children in Canada: Beyond Inclusion. Obradović-Ratković, S., Longboat, C., Burgess, J., Brock University (Canada)
• Beyond Language Acquisition: School-level antecedents of high- quality education for refugee students. Kachnic, F., Charles University (Czech Republic)
• Creating Safe Spaces: Using identity texts to share refugee experiences in the classroom. Kovinthan Levi, T. University of Toronto (Canada)
• Using the Agents of Change Toolkit to promote migrant integration in schools. de Riba Mayoral, S., Cantali, D., Pantić, N., University of Barcelona, University of Dundee, University of Edinburgh (Spain, UK)
• Schools and teachers as resettlement brokers for refugee-background young people. Anderson, V., Ortiz-Ayala, A., University of Otago (New Zealand)

 15:00-15:10  Break

15:10-15:20  Supporting Ukrainian Red Cross on ‘Caring for staff and volunteers’ as a Danish Red Cross delegate in Ukraine. Ditte Shapiro, University College Absalon

15:20-15:35  Fostering refugee education and civic education in schools through video interactions. Examples from Yemen and the Ukraine. Henrik Grunnet, Refugee Children DK (Flygtningebørn.dk)

15:35-15:45  Working in groups (break-out rooms)

15.45-16.00  Wrapping up and farewell