Researcher Highlights
Compassion and inclusion in education

Dr Maura Sellars is a pedagogical leader working towards more inclusive school systems for the most disadvantaged students.

Dr Maura Sellars describes herself as an inclusivist. The lecturer with the School of Education has a research focus that comes from her belief that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds can contribute a huge amount to an inclusive classroom.

Dr Sellars has a particular interest in inclusive classroom practices, working with students' strengths and developing the students' cognitive capacities of executive function within diverse social and cultural communities. Her research takes a holistic look at what it is to be educated and included.

“At present we are working with a factory model of education, however there are many children who are not advantaged by this type of classroom and didactive pedagogy. We are working with neo liberal and associated policies and when applied to education, these policies have a dehumanising and devaluing effect, especially on the most disadvantaged of children - those from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds,” Dr Sellars said.

Dr Sellars has just completed a new book titled ‘Educating Students with Refugee and Asylum Seeker Experiences: A Commitment to Humanity’ and has now started a new book project with Dr Scott Imig and Professor John Fischetti which is aimed at an international audience of school leaders who are managing the integration of students with degrees of difference into their school communities. There is a heavy focus on theoretical backgrounds to the principals' own stories and practical strategies to support inclusive leadership and schools as places of wellbeing and belonging.

“One of the things we know about these children is that many have had interrupted, little or no previous schooling. Children and their communities come here without the language or knowledge of how schools work or of the culture of western schools and yet they are put into classes based on their age group and expected to compete with students of the majority culture in all the ways in which competitive school systems classify students.”

“For example, this may result in an 11 year old who has never been formally educated being put into a year 5 classroom. He doesn’t have the culture, doesn’t understand the language and a lot of what is being spoken about in the classroom has nothing to do with their life experience.  Many refugee and asylum seeker children come from backgrounds of oracy. But when they enter education in Australia they come into a world of paper. The complexity is enormous and it needs a lot of education,” Dr Sellars said. “To right these wrongs will rely heavily on the development of wisdom and empathy in our school policies. We need these things to reconnect us as people and not be distant.”

Dr Sellars says her book is aimed at anyone in the education field who wants a good hard look at what happens to refugee and asylum seeker children in schools. The book is based on four themes: power; politics; people and pedagogy.

“It investigates through those main themes the things governments use and how the politics of compassion now have come to the stage where countries are deliberately and persistently putting profit before people,” Dr Sellars said.

“People are beginning to realize what is happening to the world and we need a balance now around what it is to be human and what it is to be educated.”

Dr Sellars says that Australia is purported to be a multi-cultural place but the school curriculum is not.

“We are teaching one view of the world when there are many. We need to respect and acknowledge what children bring to the classroom. But unfortunately, teachers are caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of being bound to the curriculum,” she said.

“’Belonging’ is a critical key word in student success – it’s hard for some children to belong when there is another agenda that is different to their lives.”

In another examination of refugee and asylum seeker education experience, Dr Sellars and Dr Helen Murphy of East London University have co-written a journal article on existing research on Southern Sudanese student experiences in Australian education. The journal article 'Becoming Australian: A review of Southern Sudanese students' educational experiences' presents a review of the literature around meeting students’ learning needs in Australian schools.

“In presenting this literature, the bigger picture of how schools can fail, not only refugee or asylum seeker students, but for any number of students from diverse backgrounds, becomes startlingly obvious, as do the ways in which the current political agenda inherent in the public education system in Australia privileges students of specific class and culture,” Dr Sellars said.

The journal article concludes with recommendations regarding the development of policy and the concentration on pedagogical practices that acknowledge and respect the strengths and capabilities of this group of students.

“We recommend that graduate teachers who are interested in teaching in schools with students of refugees and asylum seekers might need to find placements at those schools, so they are well prepared before they start.”

Places of belonging

Dr Sellars is also working on a joint project with Dr Rachel Burke called Primary Places of Belonging: Whole-school Approaches to Inclusion for Students with Refugee Backgrounds Attending a Public Primary School in Regional Australia.

Funded by Perpetual Impact Philanthropy Program, the project focuses on a Newcastle primary school with 40% of its student population from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds. Dr Sellars and her colleague are interviewing the whole school community to determine what interventions are in place to make the school a harmonious one for all students.

“The principal of this school turned the school around quite dramatically by putting in place practical strategies to help the refugee and asylum seeker students feel included. We are investigating how these strategies came about and why they are working for this particular community,” Dr Sellars said.

Having interpreters on hand and mentoring staff on the importance of first language maintenance are just some of the strategies the school has implemented to put the mental health and welfare of it’s community first.

“There’s no doubt these strategies will be useful in many other schools in similar circumstances that are receiving increasing numbers of refugee and asylum seeker students.”