A lifeline to learning: Leveraging technology to support education for refugees

The report focuses on persons who have been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution or natural disaster and who experience learning during a variety of phases ranging from dislocation and journey to arrival and integration in new, provisional, protracted or more durable host country settings. However, after initial searches returned only a limited number of papers and projects, some of the arguments have been additionally bolstered with a selective number of studies and reports on groups with characteristics similar to refugees, i.e. people displaced by emergencies and/or fleeing socio-economic hardships.

To comprehensively capture the potential of mobile technology in education for refugees, the research integrated different methodological approaches including systematic searches of academic databases, selective web searches and semi-structured interviews with experts, practitioners and refugees involved in mobile learning projects and initiatives. In this report, the analysis of mobile learning projects and practices is structured alongside ten education-related challenges, grouped into three main categories:

• Individual: Challenges that can negatively impact refugees’ learning and teaching opportunities, as well as their lives beyond the learning environment. These include the lack of language and literacy skills; the disorientation that might be caused en route and during the integration process in new environments; trauma and identity struggles; and exclusion and isolation.
• Education system: Challenges that transcend individual education levels and domains and stem from issues in the education system more broadly. These include the unpreparedness of teachers to meet the demands of working with refugees; the lack of openly available, appropriate and adequate learning and teaching resources; and the lack of documentation and certification mechanisms for displaced populations.
• Educational levels: Challenges that pertain to the different levels and types of education, including limited access to good-quality primary and secondary education; obstacles to vocational training and labour market participation; and restricted higher education access.