Refugee Engagement with Holocaust Education

: An Exploration

Abstract

This study investigates the engagement of students in a single school learning about the Holocaust. Using qualitative methods, to explore the experiences of four classes, and 20 students in depth, half of whom were refugee students. Their experiences, engagement and understanding were examined. A thematic analysis was conducted, and themes were identified, analysed and discussed. The themes were emotional engagement (how the students felt about studying the subject) and cognitive engagement (why the students thought they learnt about the subject, and if and why it was important to them), and behavioural engagement (how students behaved when learning about the subject) was looked at for context. The behavioural context showed that there was generally good behaviour when learning about the Holocaust but that there were some students that were badly behaved and disaffected. These were not the refugee students. The emotional engagement theme revealed that most students found learning about the Holocaust emotionally difficult and complicated. It highlighted that the refugee students empathise more than other students which caused other emotional complications that were not dealt with in class. The cognitive engagement theme showed that although there were discrepancies in what the students learnt, refugee students had a larger understanding of why they learnt about the Holocaust and resonated with the importance of learning about it more than non-refugee students. The study’s conclusions are drawn making recommendations to amend Holocaust education within diverse classrooms and through an approach for entrance into and exit out of learning about the Holocaust.

Date of Award	7 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Winchester
Supervisor	Alasdair Richardson (Supervisor) & Marie Morgan (Supervisor)