Public Events - Fulbright Outreach Lecturing Fund
We are pleased to announce two public events during a short-term visit of Fulbright scholar Dr. Mervi Kaukko to Virginia Tech, April 3-7, 2023. Dr. Kaukko's visit is supported by the Fulbright Outreach Lecturing Fund Initiative in partnership with a host of campus and community partners including Cranwell International Center, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and Blacksburg Refugee Partnership.
Public lecture, Tuesday April 4
“Refugee Education for Uncertain Futures. Analysis of Teachers’ Practices in Finland, South Africa and Australia.”
6:00 - 7:00 pm | Newman Library 207a
Refugee education refers to pedagogical practices that aim to address the academic, social and emotional needs of refugee- and asylum-seeking students. Like all education, it is prefigured by the cultural, material and political conditions of its contexts and realised in local classroom practices. This lecture explores how teachers in Australian, Finnish and South African schools aim to work towards the ”double purpose of education” (Kemmis et al. 2014), that is, help their refugee students live a good life in a world that is worth living for all. Teachers in all these countries acknowledge that refugee students will face barriers in their national systems, so they shape their teaching in ways that they think will make sense in those systems.
Webinar, Wednesday, April 5
"Education for Living Well in a World Worth Living In" Moderated by Dr. Charles Lowery and Dr. Iuliia Hoban
6:00 - 7:00 pm | Register for online webinar
This webinar introduces the new open access book Living Well in a World Worth Living in for All (Reimer, Kaukko, Windsor, Mahon & Kemmis 2023), focusing on how people are being enabled or constrained to live well in today’s world, and how to bring into being a world worth living in for all through education. The event invites the audience to consider ways to foster education that realizes transformed selves and transformed worlds: the good for each person, the good for humankind, and the good for the community of life on the planet.
About Dr. Mervi Kaukko
Originally a primary school teacher, Mervi Kaukko works as a Professor of Multicultural Education at Tampere University, Finland, and is currently (2022-2023) a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Graduate School of Education, Harvard University. Mervi’s current research projects explore, broadly, how education can help students to live a good life in a world worth living in, and what implications this has for schools and teacher education. In particular, Mervi’s research focuses on children and youth with refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds. Her current projects explore, for example, how schools can be more welcoming; what educational success looks like in the eyes of refugee students; how former unaccompanied youth in Finland, Norway and Scotland build relational well-being in their new communities; and how participatory and arts-based methods can be used with different groups of refugees. An open-access book, Living Well in a World Worth Living in, co-edited by Mervi with colleagues from Australia and Europe, was just published by Springer.
Co-sponsors
Blacksburg Refugee Partnership
College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
Center for Migrant, Refugee, and Displacement Studies
Northern Virginia Community College
Virginia Tech School of Education