Newly Qualified Teachers Fostering Inclusive Education for Their Refugee Students: A Critical Children’s Rights Studies and Critical Multicultural Education Perspective

As Children’s Rights Studies (CRS) emerged alongside the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, there has been a predominant legal focus to the field. However, over time, Critical Children’s Rights Studies (CCRS) emerged to problematize normative legal assumptions and situate children in their life worlds to more holistically advance their rights.

Multicultural Education (ME) developed as demographics diversified, with aims to inform laws, norms, and values that reduce prejudice and promote equality for all students. While an important endeavour, it has importantly advanced through Critical Multicultural Education’s (CME) emergence; an equity-based approach that can address historical wrongs and support social justice through education.

Canada has a long-standing legal commitment to multiculturalism through the integration of newcomers, including refugee children, and the school is a uniquely situated community space within which multicultural principles can transpire. However, while refugee children may experience social inclusion, they may just as well experience social exclusion despite their right to a sustained sense of belonging.

This project sees CCRS and CME come together as a united analytical framework to explore the strategies and experiences that newly certified teachers and refugee students, respectively, encounter in relation to children’s rights, multiculturalism, and inclusive educational practices in their Toronto, Ontario schools. It is argued that this heightened commitment to theoretical analysis can offer insights into ensuring a safer, more inclusive, and equitable environment that may better advance refugee students’ right to social inclusion at school.