Refugee Concerns and Students With Interrupted Formal Education ( SIFE )

Abstract

This entry offers a brief historicized and contextualized overview of the unique instructional and non‐academic needs of refugee and asylum‐seeking students with interrupted formal education (SIFE) that are often underserved in US classrooms. SIFE are often identified as a result of several factors such as: not having prior school transcripts or by visible gaps in their education records, demonstrating low literacy levels in their home language(s), and difficulty understanding grade‐level content. SIFE are distinguished from other English language learners (ELLs) due to the short period of time in which they are required to move from a pre‐production or emergent level to achieve secondary grade‐level literacy skills and content knowledge. Pedagogical implications and effective strategies employed by teacher‐scholars are presented.