Context and Implications Document for:
Methodological diversity as an asset for
transition-focused higher education
research with students from refugee
backgrounds
Sally Baker
a
, Evonne Irwin
b
, Mary Taiwo
c
, Sonal Singh
c
,
Shelley Gower
d
and Jaya Dantas
d
a
School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia,
b
English
Language and Foundation Studies Centre, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia,
c
Widening Participation Unit, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia,
d
Faculty of
Health Sciences, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
This guide accompanies the following article: Baker, S., Irwin, E., Taiwo, M., Singh,
S., Gower, S. & Dantas, J. Methodological diversity as an asset for transition-focused
higher education research with students from refugee backgrounds,
Review of Education, https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3133.
Author’s Introduction
Australian universities and schools have received increasing number of students from
refugee backgrounds (SfRBs). These students have come from a range of countries,
with recent arrivals predominantly from Syria and Iraq. Approximately half of Aus-
tralia’s refugee intake is aged between 15 and 19 years, an age when education is a pri-
ority (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2017). There is
clear consensus in the academic literature that although people from refugee back-
grounds generally demonstrate a strong commitment to, and high aspiration for, fur-
ther education, there are significant impediments to the realisation of these
aspirations. Arguably, the most frequently reported impediment to access to higher
education is language proficiency. In the Australian context, the level of English lan-
guage support offered in the school sector for young learners, or through the Adult
Migrant English Program (AMEP) in the Vocational Education and Training (VET)
sector for mature learners, is often insufficient to (a) facilitate direct entry to univer-
sity and (b) support students with the language and literacy requirements of under-
graduate study. Added to this, a lack of navigational knowledge of access to
information about higher education pathways, opportunities, systems, rules and
expectations, impede SfRBs’ ability to make informed decisions. Moreover, while
‘transition’ is a significant area of inquiry in the higher education literature, a
© 2018 British Educational Research Association
Review of Education
Vol. 7, No. 1, February 2019, pp. 33–35
DOI: 10.1002/rev3.3142