Caring alone: The boundaries of teachers' ethics of care for newly arrived immigrant and refugee learners in Denmark

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Highlights

  • We have little understanding of how teachers of refugee and migrant learners practice care.

  • There is a need to understand how teachers approach and respond to the care needs of newcomers.

  • Teachers in our study went beyond language teaching and cared for newcomers.

  • Teachers were often ill-equipped to deal with the complex psychosocial needs of their learners.

  • The availability of functioning and professional external support structures shaped care.

Abstract

Many teachers find themselves working with immigrant and refugee learners who have complex psychosocial needs. This study examines qualitatively how 11 teachers of preparatory classes in Danish public schools approach and respond to the care needs of newcomers. Through an ethics of care lens, we show, one, how teachers care for newcomers, and two, how external support structures and individual dispositions to go beyond their teaching duty determine their care responses. We find that some teachers feel ill-equipped to address the psychosocial needs of newcomers, which, in the absence of external support, translate into feelings of stress and guilt.

Introduction

There is growing interest in the potential of schools to act as nodes of care and support for vulnerable learners (Skovdal & Campbell, 2015). This is evident in the expanding literature on the role of schools in promoting the psychosocial well-being and mental health of newly arrived refugee and immigrant youth (Rousseau and Guzder, 2008, Fazel et al., 2016, Crosnoe et al., 2004, Pastoor, 2015, O’Shea et al., 2000, Bennouna et al., 2019). Evidence suggests that school-based initiatives can improve the mental health outcomes of refugee and immigrant youth. A review of 13 studies evaluating the effects of school-based interventions to improve the social-emotional function of refugee learners noted mostly positive effects, but also negative or null effects (Sullivan & Simonson, 2016). Whilst recent reviews of school-based interventions suggest that schools may offer a suitable space for promoting the mental health and psychosocial well-being amongst refugee and immigrant youth, many challenges remain, including school capacities to engage with mental-health promoting interventions (Bennouna et al., 2019). Before school capacities can be strengthened, there is a need to examine the capacities of teachers, the frontline staff who interact with vulnerable refugee and immigrant youth on a daily basis. At present we have little understanding of how teachers experience and interpret the boundaries shaping their capacities to practice care and support of refugee and immigrant youth within the school environment (Hos, 2016). Against this background, and in our interest to understand the context within which school-based mental health promotion initiatives are located, we explore qualitatively how teachers approach and respond to the care needs of newly arrived refugee and migrant learners in Danish public schools.

Three bodies of literature reveal core functions of teachers in supporting the psychosocial health and well-being of refugee and immigrant learners.

One, teachers play a pivotal role in identifying vulnerable learners and mediating their access to mental health services (Fazel et al., 2009, Hodes, 2002a, Hodes, 2002b, Rousseau and Guzder, 2008). However, some teachers feel reluctant or incapable of assuming this role. A study with Norwegian teachers of young unaccompanied refugee youth, noted that “most teachers neither have sufficient knowledge nor competence regarding the psychological problems their learners struggle with” (Pastoor, 2015, p. 252). While this may partly be explained by the hidden and internalised nature of mental health struggles (Durà-Vilà, Klasen, Makatini, Rahimi, & Hodes, 2013), teachers who operate in schools where mental health is spoken about and form part of their support structures, are more likely to identify and refer vulnerable youth to mental health services (Pastoor, 2015). One way to strengthen the mental health competence of schools is to make available school-based mental health services. School-based mental health services have been shown to have a greater effect on uptake and retention in care compared to mental health services that are not school-based (O’Shea et al., 2000).

Studies suggest that school-based mental health services carry less stigma compared to more conventional and clinic-based alternatives (Durà-Vilà et al., 2013, Hughes, 2014), and are more accessible to children with refugee backgrounds (Cheney et al., 2014, Fazel et al., 2014). This leads us to the second core function of teachers, namely their engagement with school-based mental health services (Tucker, Trotman, & Martyn, 2015). Fazel et al. (2016) show how teachers can give important credibility to external mental health professionals and facilitate the establishment of trustful relations. When mental health services are located in school settings and partnerships forged between teachers and mental health professionals, both seem to benefit. A case study from the United Kingdom shows how teachers, in addition to referring learners to the mental health professionals, also invite these professionals to the classroom for observation when needed (O’Shea et al., 2000). They describe how teachers and mental health professionals can discuss and facilitate treatment and management strategies for the learners. On the other hand, when teachers and the mental health professionals fail to form working partnerships, tensions between them are likely to undermine the mental health services (Flaherty et al., 1998, Waxman et al., 1999).

A third health-promoting function of teachers is to create a safe, positive and inclusive classroom environment for newcomer learners (Eide and Hjern, 2013, Kohli and Mather, 2003, Mock-Muñoz De Luna, 2009, Montgomery, 2011, Kia-Keating and Ellis, 2007, Fazel and Betancourt, 2017, Isik-Ercan et al., 2017, Reed et al., 2012). This can be done in many different ways, one of which is to develop close teacher-learner relationships. Newcomer learners who feel connected to, and supported by, teachers have both higher educational outcomes and self-rated well-being (Jones and Deutsch, 2011, Sanders et al., 2017, Crosnoe et al., 2004, Pastoor, 2015, Sullivan and Simonson, 2016). Factors influencing teacher-learner relationships are both personal and structural. Futch Ehrlich, Deutsch, Fox, Johnson, and Varga (2016), for example, investigate how personal characteristics such as shared interests facilitate close relationships between teachers and learners. Structural factors, such as the availability of support networks, are also necessary. Studies show that schools with well-functioning support networks facilitate teachers’ sense of their mission and their willingness to build supportive relationships with learners (Humphrey et al., 2010, Lam and Hui, 2010). Lam and Hui (2010) observe that teachers who feel cared for, and who interact with colleagues who share the same understanding of teacher’s pastoral role, are more effective in their own care of their students. Support networks have also been identified to help teachers deal with stress and workloads associated with a more holistic teacher role (Chan & Hui, 1998). Another way is for teachers to generate social capital and supportive peer relations between learners by facilitating school spaces where learners can exchange perspectives and experiences in a safe social setting. Borsch, Skovdal and Jervelund (2019) have explored how teaching and school practices guided by an inclusive ethos and a sense of collective responsibility help refugee and non-refugee learners build trustful relationships and learn from each other. A number of teacher-guided programmes for newcomer learners, including class-based discussion groups and playback theatre, have also shown promising results in terms of enhancing peer social capital and improving learners’ psychosocial wellbeing (Bennouna et al., 2019, Rousseau and Guzder, 2008).

All of these functions require teachers, in different ways, to go beyond their teaching role and engage in roles and activities that may exceed their competences or emotional availability. While there is no doubt that teachers play an instrumental role in promoting the psychosocial health and well-being of children, it is disconcerting that there has been little effort to understand how teachers who interact with refugee and migrant learners on a daily basis experience and practice care within the school environment. It is precisely such insights, which scholars, programme planners, evaluators and educators must consider and act on if they are to facilitate the function teachers to support the psychosocial health and well-being of refugee and immigrant learners. Moreover, commentators have cautioned against earmarking teachers as responsible for responding to the complex psychosocial needs of learners with refugee and migrant backgrounds (Skovdal & Campbell, 2015). Campbell et al., 2016: p1 go on to argue that we need to “caution against policy expansions of teacher’s role without recognition of the personal and social costs of emotional labour, and the need for significant increases in resources and institutional recognition to enable teachers to adopt support roles.”

Given a paucity in literature elucidating everyday care in classrooms with refugee and migrant learners, we explore how teachers of preparatory classes approach and respond to the care needs of refugee and migrant learners on a daily basis and examine how their care conundrums are shaped by broader structural and contextual factors. Our findings raise questions about the feasibility of teachers taking on care and support roles beyond what they were trained to do, even if willing and able to care holistically for immigrant and refugee learners. Thus, we conclude the paper with a discussion of whether teachers’ provision of psychosocial support for newcomer learners holds realistic promises or rather rests on false premises. Such insights and discussions are critical to inform future school-based mental health programming for newly arrived refugee and immigrant learners.

To investigate how teachers approach and practice care in the classroom, we turn to the ‘ethics of care’ literature for an analytical lens. Ethics of care is a theory put forward by Gilligan (1982) and later elaborated upon by Tronto (1993). We take inspiration from Tronto’s phased and processual understanding of ethics of care, which first stipulates that a prerequisite of care is for someone or some group to notice unmet needs. In other words, pastoral care in the classroom is only possible if teachers notice the unmet care needs of newcomer learners. However, the process of identifying unmet needs involves both learners and teachers. It is how the learners respond and relate to their teachers, which will guide the teachers’ understanding of the learners’ needs. Tronto calls this phase ‘caring about’. Secondly, once unmet needs have been identified, someone or some group needs to take responsibility for meeting those needs. For pastoral care to become a reality, teachers (the one caring) need to recognise that they play a role, or have a responsibility in meeting the pastoral care needs of learners (the ones cared for). As a conceptual framework, ethics of care, and its interest in the processes through which responsibility is assumed, allows for a critical assessment of the care obligations assigned to teachers. Tronto calls this ‘caring for’. Thirdly, once care responsibility is assumed, the hands-on work of giving care can be done. Care-giving, according to Tronto (1993) necessitates competence and capacity of the one-caring. Competence can refer to the combination of skills, knowledge and values that guide the pastoral care practices of teachers. Capacity is the degree to which teachers can act on the basis of their competence. This allows us to examine how structures, relationships and resources influence the individual’s chances to make use of his or her competence (Hugman, 2014). Fourthly, and lastly, care is received and responded to. Newcomer learners are not passive recipients of care, but respond to the care they receive. Teachers can observe this response and adapt their care-giving accordingly. Rather than seeing care-receiving as a fourth phase, we consider it a crucial element of the three preceding phases.

Ethics of care has been used to study teacher support and conceptions of care in a number of different contexts. This includes teacher’s care of orphaned and vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa (Campbell et al., 2016, Skovdal & Evans, 2017), British and Swiss primary school teachers’ conceptions of care (Vogt, 2002), as well as in newcomer classrooms in the United States (Hos, 2016). This literature suggests that ‘ethics of care’ can helpfully steer analyses of care interactions between teachers and learners and be usefully applied to an exploration of how teachers respond to the varying needs of learners with refugee and migrant backgrounds.

Section snippets

Methodology

This study is guided by the following research question: How do teachers of preparatory classes in Denmark approach, respond to, and negotiate, the pastoral care needs of learners with refugee and migrant backgrounds? To answer this question we draw on a qualitative research design, enabling an exploration of experiences, meanings and practices and the role of context in shaping these (Skovdal & Cornish, 2015). The study has been reported to relevant authorities in accordance with the rules set

Teachers’ care for newcomer learners

Teachers of newcomer learners approach care very differently, depending on how they assume their care responsibilities and view their role as teachers in preparatory classes. One teacher explains how she understands the temporal boundary of her role, recognising that she only has two years to help the learners achieve their potential: “Life is a process, education and learning is a process. They will achieve what they have time for with us. After that they will achieve what they have time for

Discussion

Our research sought to explore how teachers approach and respond to the care needs of newcomers with refugee and migrant backgrounds through their everyday interactions. Building on the work of Hos (2016) we drew on an ethics of care lens (Tronto, 1993) to unpack how teachers perceive their care roles and responsibilities, as well as to understand their perceived capacity to care for newcomer learners. Our research identified a number of specific care practices, illustrating how teachers of

Conclusion

We found that to different degrees and in different ways, all teachers in our study went beyond their Danish language teaching roles to care for their learners’ psychosocial wellbeing. However, the extent to which teachers of newly arrived migrants and refugees are able to make available pastoral care depends on (i) their understanding of how the learners’ psychosocial well-being intersects with their capacity to learn Danish; (ii) the capacity and competence of the teachers to deal with the

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Felix Häggström: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Anne Sofie Børsch: Writing - review & editing. Morten Skovdal: Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the teachers participating in our study. ASB and MS received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 754849 to support this study.

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