Resilience among Newcomer Students in Canada: A Transformative and Socio-Ecological Analysis of Narratives from Tree of Life Workshops
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Newcomer students’ adaptation is a major concern for Canadian educators and teachers due to the recent influx of refugees and immigrants resulting from political, social, and natural displacement. Intersections of race, gender, language, low SES, and previous traumas have traditionally motivated researchers and policymakers to focus mostly on language, mental health symptomology, and risk assessment among this population. Consequently, in institutional programming (e.g., schooling, community organizations, government welcome programs), overemphasizing risk factors has created a deficit-oriented approach in which newcomer students are viewed as the victims and passive recipients of services. However, to create an empowering post-migration experience, it is crucial to understand how newcomer students view themselves, navigate their resources, and make sense of their experience.This case study’s narrative and transformative stance enabled: 1. Shedding light on the less heard stories of the newcomer students and highlighting the risk and resources identified by the newcomers themselves; 2. Examining the influence of participation in a strength-based workshop where the newcomer students’ agency was encouraged. The main evidence of this study was collected through a narrative activity called Tree of Life for 8 weeks with 3 groups of students in two schools within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The influence of the workshop was studied via facilitator’s observations, teachers’ reflections, and the students’ post-workshop interviews. Findings of this study revealed the holistic understanding of the newcomer students about their pre- and post-migration experience, how cultural background and past experiences as well as their hopes for the future can be a source of strength, and how the schools’ attitude about newcomers can influence the students’ post-migration experience. The positive feedback and outcomes of the workshop call for participatory and culturally relevant programs for newcomer students where they feel safe and have the chance to know themselves, build their new identity, and create community. Similar programs are especially recommended for students of refugee background who have faced significant interruption in their schooling, where the intersection of past traumas, present stigmatization, and socioeconomic status has influenced their schooling experience and self-image. Keywords: newcomer students, resilience, transformative paradigm, narrative, culture, socio-ecological approach, strength-based approach.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".