Communication Disorders and the inclusion of newcomer African refugees in rural primary schools of British Columbia, Canada

Year 2012, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 102 - 121, 01.08.2012

Lantana M Usman

Abstract

In Canadian public primary schools, newcomer West African refugees like other ethnic immigrant students are a visible minority group, often referred as Linguistic and Culturally Different (LCD) students. In the province of British Columbia, newcomer immigrant students are subjected to a battery of tests, as soon as they enroll in the primary public school system. These tests are the provincial Standardized Assessment Tests (SAT) and classroom Teacher Assessment of Learning (TAL) that aim at obtaining data for diagnostic purposes of students‘ learning and teaching purposes. Specific to LCD refugee and immigrant students, they are also assessed on English Language Communication Proficiency (oral and written), Social Skills amongst others, regardless of the degree of proficiency in English language as members of the Anglo-phone Commonwealth countries whose curriculum and medium of instruction is British related. More often, the African immigrants and refugee students of the Anglo-phone African countries are most times diagnosed with English Language Communication Disorders (ELCDs), which has been questioned by some Canadian researchers of Learning Disabilities (LDs) and Multicultural Education (ME), especially with regards to the cultural compatibility of the assessment process/diagnostic tools, and criteria used to assess these LCD refugee and immigrant students. The article discusses the above discourse, with the support of findings of a qualitative ethnographic research findings and related literature

Keywords

Communication Disorders, Primary Education, Learning Disabilities, Multicultural Education, Refugees, Canada

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