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Caring Is Not Enough: Teachers' Enactment of Ethical Care for Adolescent Students With Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) in a Newcomer Classroom

Education and Urban Society

Published online on

Abstract

The educational landscape for schools in the United States is continuing to shift with the arrival of refugee students with limited or interrupted formal education, especially at the secondary schools. As refugee students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) adjust to schools in the United States, they may experience acculturative stress, migration stress, and stress of learning a new language. Teachers play an essential role in providing support to help immigrant and refugee students adjust. Caring should be at the core of education. For ethical care to occur, teachers need to see themselves as "responsible for empowering their students." This article reports on an ethnographic research study of a newcomer classroom with refugee SLIFE in an urban secondary school. The participant teacher in this study exhibited ethical care toward refugee SLIFE and provided positive classroom experiences for SLIFE, which is a critical step toward betterment of educational experiences for them. However, caring by itself does not provide the necessary support needed for the refugee SLIFE’s success in U.S. schools.