Student Trauma, the Hidden Curriculum, and Cultural Humility

Abstract

Student trauma can set up challenges and obstacles to a student's academic success. The correlation between experienced childhood trauma and negative medical and social problems is significant, creating problems at school with academic work, behaviors, and social interactions. Further compounding this issue are cultural differences in traumatic resolution and the hidden curriculum of education, especially as the globalization of school communities increases. The complexity of this issue generates an ideal situation for a multidisciplinary team approach, with precise defining of each team member's role to increase comprehensive services for teachers, students, families, and the administration. Essential members of the multidisciplinary team are school administration, teachers, family members, guidance staff, counseling staff, school social workers, school nurses, and community resources that can coordinate with the school to create individualized plans to optimize student success. The chapter is a compilation of scholarly research through desktop research.

An Overview of Mobile Learning for Refugee Students: Juxtaposing Refugee Needs with Mobile Applications’ Characteristics

“…Such heterogeneity adds to the complexity of refugee education and needs to be taken into account. Several researchers have introduced various factors that challenge refugee education [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. In this article, a selected number of factors, including a prior model (see Figure 1) associated with refugee learning, were reviewed and summarized in Table 1.…”

“…Place of residence [22,25] Lack of language literacy in their native language [26] Mental health issues and psychological situation [22,24] Cultural background [22,32,33] Absence of a coherent curriculum and non-qualified teachers [26] Health issues [23] Lack of acquisition of the host-country language-Language barrier [21,22,24] Dealing with traumatic experiences [30,31] Issue of lost documents and difficulty in recognizing prior educational award papers [21] Low levels of acquisition of English language [22] Lack of family and social network support [24] Family's educational and socio-cultural background [34] High academic requirements of school subjects-Inappropriate educational material and texts for students with low levels of literacy [35] Lack of digital literacy skills [27][28][29] High socio-cultural requirements of school subjects [30,35] All the gathered factors were classified into five key categories (a. living conditions, b. learning needs, c. emotional needs, d. socio-cultural differences, and e. educational system of the refugee host country), all of which will be analyzed below (see Table 1).…”

“…Torture, war experiences, loss of and separation from their loved ones before arriving in the host country, in combination with loneliness, stress-due to the ignorance of the laws, the language, the culture, and the urban lifestyle-and traumatic experiences in dealing with poor living conditions, racism, and discrimination in the new host country's environment are the usual issues which, according to Cerna [24], seemed to affect refugees' well-being in the long term. All the above traumatic experiences could pose challenges and obstacles to refugee students' academic success [30]. Common mental health issues that have arisen are depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alienation, isolation, and social marginalization [22][23][24]31].…”

“…One of the school's essential functions is the transmission and reproduction of its dominant social group [30]. Refugee students have to handle their different cultural backgrounds and are unaware, for the most part, of the culture of their host country.…”

“…The hidden curriculum's ignorance might lead refugee students to unacceptable behavior and harmful practices giving their teachers and classmates wrong impressions. Examples of the hidden curriculum include punctuality in arriving at school, raising a hand to answer a question, and asking for permission to leave the classroom [30].…”