ABSTRACT

Teachers play a critical role in providing social and emotional support for newly arrived migrant and refugee learners. Such care ordinarily takes place in the classroom, raising questions about the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 school closures on their care work. In this article we analyze qualitative data from phone interviews with eight teachers in Danish preparatory classes, paying particular attention to the challenges they faced staying in contact with, and supporting, migrant and refugee learners during the school closure. The interviews were coded and thematically analysed, revealing significant changes in the teachers’ care work. We draw on the concepts of caringscapes and carescapes to unravel how the shifts in space, from physical copresence in the school classroom to distance learning, affected their care work. Despite many efforts, teachers reported difficulties staying in contact with the learners remotely due to their limited access to virtual communication platforms and language barriers. These communication difficulties and the lack of bodily copresence not only made teaching highly challenging, but interrupted their care work, including maintaining daily schedules and facilitating social closeness between learners. Furthermore, the teachers expressed concern about their inability to link and refer the most vulnerable learners to external support services, which were temporarily closed due to the societal lockdown. Our study highlights how COVID-19 induced school closures constrain the care work of teachers of migrant and refugee learners. The concerns and struggles raised in this article not only stress the importance of the physical school space and closeness in facilitating care for newly arrived migrant and refugee learners, but signal the vulnerabilities of this group of children during times of crisis.

摘要

在为新来的移民和难民学习者提供社会和情感支持方面，教师扮演着至关重要的角色。此类照料通常在教室中进行，使人们对2020年COVID-19停课对其照料工作的影响产生疑问。在本文中，我们分析了与丹麦预备班的八名教师进行电话采访时得到的定性数据，并特别关注他们在学校关闭期间与移民和难民学习者保持联系和支持方面所面临的挑战。对访谈进行了编码和主题分析，揭示了教师护理工作中的重大变化。我们利用关怀景观和照料景观的概念来阐明空间的变化，从学校教室中的共同存在到远程学习，如何影响他们的照料工作。尽管付出了很多努力，老师们报告说，由于他们对虚拟交流平台和语言障碍的访问有限，很难与他们保持远程联系。这些沟通上的困难和缺乏身体共处，不仅使教学变得非常具有挑战性，而且中断了他们的护理工作，包括维持每日的日程安排和促进学习者之间的社会亲密关系。此外，教师对他们无法将最弱势的学习者联系和转介到外部支持服务表示关注，这些服务由于社会封锁而暂时关闭。我们的研究强调了COVID-19导致学校停课如何限制移民和难民学习者教师的照料工作。