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RESEARCH ARTICLE
The role of culturally responsive social and
emotional learning in supporting refugee
inclusion and belonging: A thematic analysis
of service provider perspectives
Cyril Bennouna
1
, Hannah Brumbaum
2
, Molly M. McLay
2
, Carine Allaf
3
, Michael Wessells
4
,
Lindsay StarkID
2
*
1Department of Political Science, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America,
2Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri, United States of America, 3Qatar
Foundation International, Washington, Columbia, United States of America, 4Mailman School of Public
Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
*lindsaystark@wustl.edu
Abstract
Young refugees resettled to the U.S. from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region
face significant acculturative stressors, including language barriers, unfamiliar norms and
practices, new institutional environments, and discrimination. While schools may ease new-
comer adjustment and inclusion, they also risk exacerbating acculturative stress and social
exclusion. This study seeks to understand the opportunities and challenges that schoolwide
social and emotional learning (SEL) efforts may present for supporting refugee incorpo-
ration, belonging, and wellbeing. We completed semi-structured interviews with a purposive
sample of 40 educators and other service providers in Austin, Texas, Harrisonburg, Virginia,
and Detroit Metropolitan Area, Michigan as part of the SALaMA project. We conducted a
thematic analysis with transcripts from these interviews guided by the framework of cultur-
ally responsive pedagogy. The findings revealed that students and providers struggled with
acculturative stressors and structural barriers to meaningful engagement. Schoolwide SEL
also provided several mechanisms through which schools could facilitate newcomer adjust-
ment and belonging, which included promoting adult SEL competencies that center equity
and inclusion, cultivating more meaningfully inclusive school climates, and engaging fami-
lies through school liaisons from the newcomer community. We discuss the implications of
these findings for systemwide efforts to deliver culturally responsive SEL, emphasize the
importance of distinguishing between cultural and structural sources of inequality, and con-
sider how these lessons extend across sectors and disciplinary traditions.
Introduction
Despite repeated federal efforts to restrict refugee resettlement since 2016, the United States
(U.S.) received some 30,000 refugees in 2019, about a quarter of all resettled refugees around
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OPEN ACCESS
Citation: Bennouna C, Brumbaum H, McLay MM,
Allaf C, Wessells M, Stark L (2021) The role of
culturally responsive social and emotional learning
in supporting refugee inclusion and belonging: A
thematic analysis of service provider perspectives.
PLoS ONE 16(8): e0256743. https://doi.org/
10.1371/journal.pone.0256743
Editor: Ramune Jacobsen, University of
Copenhagen: Kobenhavns Universitet, DENMARK
Received: March 23, 2021
Accepted: August 13, 2021
Published: August 26, 2021
Copyright: ©2021 Bennouna et al. This is an open
access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author and source are credited.
Data Availability Statement: The datasets
generated and/or analyzed during the current study
are not publicly available due to IRB restrictions but
are available from the corresponding author for
researchers who meet the criteria for access to
confidential data.
Funding: This work was generously supported by
Qatar Foundation International (QFI). Dr. Allaf
contributed to study design and provided comment
on the manuscript, but did not contribute to data
the world [1,2]. Given a national climate with increasingly common expressions of anti-immi-
grant sentiment, especially towards newcomers from the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) region, and reduced federal resources for resettlement during the Trump administra-
tion, practitioners and scholars in the U.S. have struggled to support resettled refugees ade-
quately [3,4].
Newcomers may face significant challenges acclimating to a new society, including lan-
guage barriers, unfamiliar social norms, values, belief systems, practices, institutional environ-
ments, and unwelcoming contexts of reception [3,5]. Acculturation describes the
multidimensional process of cultural exchange and transformation that takes place when new-
comers and receiving societies interact [6]. Over the course of migration and resettlement,
newcomers may embrace and draw strength from a plurality of cultural identities, whether on
the basis of place, race, ethnicity, religion, nation, or otherwise. However, managing various
cultural affiliations may also produce stress, especially in an unsupportive environment, pro-
voking feelings of anxiety, isolation, depression, and other effects on mental health and psy-
chosocial wellbeing [4,7,8]. Acculturative stress may be exacerbated by the receiving
community, through microaggressions or discrimination, and by the heritage community,
when some members disapprove of an individual’s process of change [9]. In the U.S., newcom-
ers from the MENA region, in particular, may encounter identity-based discrimination, such
as Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment, while also being subject to racialization [10,11].
Additionally, refugees with prior exposure to armed conflict and forced migration may con-
tinue to suffer from prior adverse life events, such as witnessing violence, family separation,
and protracted displacement [12,13].
Acculturation processes may vary between individuals and across the life course. Adoles-
cent acculturation is important to consider given the unique protective, promotive, and risk
factors associated with this phase of development [10]. Some newcomer adolescents adjust to
their new environments relatively quickly compared to adults, due in part to proximal sup-
ports from public services, like schools, and peer networks [8]. Adjustment may also vary
depending on age at arrival, with those arriving younger tending to have higher high school
graduation and college matriculation rates that are comparable to U.S.-born students [14]. The
differences in acculturation between adolescents and their adult caregivers may produce a
“familial acculturative gap,” during which parents remain more connected to their heritage
culture, while children adapt more readily to their new society, at times distancing themselves
from their heritage culture [8]. In addition to managing these acculturative stressors, resettled
refugees have often had interruptions in schooling, which, when coupled with mental health
and psychosocial stressors associated with displacement and resettlement, may adversely affect
academic performance, belonging, and risk of dropout [8].
While common definitions of acculturation acknowledge the roles that both newcomer and
receiving communities play in the process [5], research has typically focused more on the expe-
riences and actions of newcomers [15]. However, the context of reception, including public
service systems in the receiving society, such as resettlement offices, healthcare centers, and
schools, are also central to acculturation [9,15]. In addition to meeting basic needs, public ser-
vice providers can also adjust their practices to promote inclusion and belonging in a process
that has been termed “bureaucratic incorporation,” introducing newcomers to social networks
and institutional norms and bolstering the protective and promotive factors that make adoles-
cence a sensitive period for building resilience [16–19]. At the same time, however, public ser-
vices may also produce acculturative stressors and exacerbate inequalities for newcomers,
especially when service delivery systems are designed around a dominant ethnic group—such
as the white, English-speaking, Judeo-Christian majority in the U.S.—or a monolithic concept
of a static minority group. Such services may heighten social exclusion, contribute to
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collection, primary analysis, or publication
decision.
Competing interests: The authors have declared
that no competing interests exist.
marginalization, or reinforce a pressure to assimilate to the receiving society’s dominant group
[8,20,21].
Discrimination towards immigrants and historically racialized minorities—whether in
medicine, psychology, or education—has driven a growing yet fragmented research base cen-
tering the need for more welcoming and inclusive public services [22–24]. Despite these
efforts, there is no cross-disciplinary, unified framework for developing or analyzing culturally
responsive public services. Further complicating efforts to design and study culturally respon-
sive service provision are close relationships between intersecting types of inequality, whether
based on ethnic identity, socioeconomic status, or legal status, which are often conflated by
service providers and scholars alike [25,26].
In order to overcome such conceptual and analytic challenges, the education field has
advanced a framework of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) [27,28]. Originating as a
response to systemic racism in U.S. education—where increasingly diverse student bodies are
taught by predominantly white, female educators—CRP is not a single adaptation or interven-
tion, but an approach that reimagines the entire educational system [29]. The framework
builds on decades of education scholarship aimed at engaging historically excluded learners in
the U.S., especially Black youth, by promoting equitable academic success, positive social iden-
tity formation, and an ability to grapple with social inequalities [30]. CRP proposes a system-
wide approach recognizing the strengths of students from all backgrounds, drawing on
cultural assets, life experiences, and learning styles to promote more inclusive education [31]
and demanding change of faculty, staff, curricula, policies, and processes for this effort [29].
Increasingly, educators are calling for practices that not only maintain students’ cultural heri-
tages—as if those were static—but also sustain and respect them through continued engage-
ment, such as through native language instruction [32].
CRP offers a useful framework for supporting newcomer acculturation through systems
and practices that attend to social identity, belonging, and equity. While research on culturally
responsive services has rarely intersected with the acculturation literature, this relationship is
emerging, as culturally responsive programs are increasingly used to help mitigate accultura-
tive stress [33–35]. In this article, we draw on CRP to study how educators and other school-
related service providers participate in acculturation with adolescent newcomers from the
MENA region. In particular, we apply CRP to analyze schoolwide social and emotional learn-
ing (SEL), an increasingly common educational model that strives to build the knowledge, atti-
tudes, and skills that students need for success at school and beyond [36,37]. Although there is
considerable variation across SEL approaches [38], we engage principally with the Collabora-
tive for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)’s widely used model, which cen-
ters on five “core competencies,” namely self-awareness, self-management, social awareness,
relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. CASEL conceptualizes SEL at multiple
levels, including core competencies for not only individual students, but also adult service pro-
viders, school climate, and family and community partnerships [39].
With this focus on cultivating awareness and healthy relationships across these levels, a
growing interdisciplinary literature has recognized SEL as an opportunity to support accultur-
ation among students and providers, while also promoting newcomer wellbeing [40,41]. In a
recent participatory study with adolescents resettled from the MENA region [35], for example,
we found that, in addition to broadening SEL competencies to emphasize inclusion and equity,
these students wanted more emphasis on culturally responsive teaching and on promoting a
welcoming school climate. But how do educators and other service providers working with
these students think about the opportunities and challenges of delivering culturally responsive
SEL? What approaches do they consider successful for supporting refugee incorporation,
belonging, and wellbeing after resettlement, and what are the limitations of these approaches?
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Guided by these research questions, this article identifies several promising approaches for
promoting culturally responsive SEL across the school system, but it also investigates common
barriers to inclusion that result in part from an insufficient understanding of the needs and
preferences of the resettled MENA population and from inattention to the distinct cultural
and structural challenges that they face.
Methods
Setting
Data collection took place as part of the Study of Adolescent Lives after Migration to America
(SALaMA), a multi-year, mixed-methods study exploring the mental health and psychosocial
wellbeing of newcomers resettled to the U.S. from the MENA region. We conducted inter-
views in Harrisonburg, Virginia and Austin, Texas during summer 2018 and in the Detroit
Metropolitan Area (DMA) during fall 2019 [40,42]. We selected these sites purposively, based
on their histories of welcoming families from conflict-affected MENA countries and existing
relationships with local school systems. Collectively, Virginia, Texas, and Michigan have reset-
tled 123,288 refugees since 2008 [1]. In 2015, 57.8% of refugees and special immigrant visa
(SIV) holders in Michigan were from the MENA region, compared to 29.5% in Virginia,
20.2% in Texas, and 15.6% nationally [43].
Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) serves around 6,400 students, 46% of whom
were born outside the U.S. Around 9% of students speak Arabic, and 6% speak Kurdish [44].
Austin Independent School District (AISD) serves around 80,000 students, 27% of whom are
English language learners (ELLs), with Arabic being the most common language after Spanish
[45]. DMA is well-known as having among the largest Arab ethnic enclaves in the U.S. [46].
Global Educational Excellence (GEE), a network of charter schools, serves approximately
4,500 students across 14 schools in Michigan and Ohio, as well as seven schools in the Middle
East [47]. At the three GEE high schools in this study, about 53% of students are ELLs, with a
significant percentage being newcomers from conflict-affected countries in the MENA region
[48].
Participants
This article focuses on the subset of SALaMA data involving key informants responsible for
services, programming, or policies relevant to newcomer adolescents and their families. Key
informants included teachers, guidance counselors, school district/division administrators,
case workers, therapists, and NGO personnel, which we refer to broadly as “service providers.”
Several also offered newcomers a range of psychosocial supports that extended well beyond
their formal responsibilities [40]. In all three sites, we selected key informants purposively
from lists of service providers developed with local partners (in Harrisonburg, a division
administrator; in Austin, AISD’s Refugee Family Support Office; in DMA, a GEE system offi-
cial and support staff). The research team recruited from the lists via email and/or phone and
continued recruitment until reaching saturation, which we assess as being the point where lit-
tle new relevant information being shared. All service providers recruited for this study agreed
to participate or referred us to a colleague who was deemed to have more relevant
information.
We developed separate semi-structured interview guides for use with educators, other ser-
vice providers, administrators, and government officials, respectively (S1 File). Guided by an
overarching aim of understanding how schools and their community partners support new-
comers from the MENA region, the study team designed these semi-structured interview
guides by reviewing available public information about the research sites (e.g., school and
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resettlement office websites, local newspapers, and published reports), conducting pre-visit
consultations with local partners, and conducting preliminary field visits. In all sites, key infor-
mants provided written informed consent and were asked to recommend other potential
participants.
Data collection
Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews lasting 30–90 minutes. Interviews typi-
cally took place in the participant’s office or in a similar professional setting where privacy
could be secured. The data collection team consisted of four public health researchers, with
two conducting interviews in Harrisonburg and Austin and two conducting interviews in
DMA. All researchers were trained qualitative interviewers and had received special training
on best ethical practices for research on forced migration. Questions were tailored to key infor-
mants’ job functions and focused on challenges faced by newcomers, as well as available sup-
ports, strengths that newcomers brought to their schools and communities, and ideas for
promoting positive outcomes for these students. The researchers recorded all data collection
sessions using an audio-recording device, unless the participant requested otherwise, and kept
detailed field notes throughout. Following the recordings, team members transcribed all audio
files. The research team then reviewed, edited, and de-identified all transcripts, which were
only available to the analysis team.
Ethical considerations
The Austin and Harrisonburg research protocols were approved by the Institutional Review
Boards (IRB) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health (IRB-AAAR7830),
AISD’s Department of Research and Evaluation (R18.62), and the Superintendent of Schools
at HCPS. The DMA protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Wash-
ington University in St. Louis (IRB-201905151) and participating schools’ principals.
Data analysis
Taking a grounded theory approach, we conducted thematic analysis with transcribed data
using the constant comparative method [49,50]. After reviewing transcripts, the research team
developed initial codes corresponding to research objectives and questions. We then refined
these codes using existing literature on immigration acculturation and incorporation, social
and emotional learning, and mental health and psychosocial wellbeing to develop analytic
memos and an initial codebook that grouped the codes into larger themes corresponding to
the literature (i.e., life experiences and challenges; school-specific; supports; relationships;
structural factors; intercultural factors; linkages; innovations). We then recruited a team of six
researchers with backgrounds in public health, social work, psychology, and refugee resettle-
ment to code data after being trained on the study protocol and codebook and they further
refined the codes and themes. After iterating the codebook through multiple rounds of review
and revision, the team finalized the codebook’s 62 codes and eight themes and built inter-
coder reliability (ICR) using Dedoose’s Training Center, during which each member of the
team double blind-coded segments of the dataset. Coders were required to reach at least 66.7%
ICR on tested codes before being assigned transcripts in Dedoose. Coding applications were
reviewed by the lead analyst to resolve questions and issues.
To better understand the ways in which service providers delivered culturally responsive
interventions to support acculturation, team members utilized another iterative process to
identify themes and sub-themes in the data related to adult SEL, school climate, and family
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partnerships. They compared these to empirical and theoretical literatures on adolescent SEL,
its various adaptations, and the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of forced migrants.
Results
Forty service providers were interviewed across the three sites (Table 1). Of the providers, 65%
(n = 26) identified as women; 55% (n = 22) were in leadership positions (e.g., administration),
while 45% (n = 18) were in direct service provision roles. School-based providers comprised
the majority of the sample at the district (n = 9) and school (n = 16) levels, with 37.5% of the
sample consisting of community-based providers (n = 15). No participant dropped out of the
study and one participant was interviewed twice.
Service providers articulated challenges experienced in providing culturally responsive ser-
vices that supported newcomer students’ unique needs during acculturation. These challenges
arose 1) in the social and emotional learning of service providers (adult SEL); 2) in the design
and implementation of policies and initiatives (school climate); and 3) in building partnerships
with newcomer families (family partnerships). Service providers also identified various forms
of culturally responsive efforts that they took to address these challenges and support new-
comer students at each level (Fig 1).
Adult social and emotional learning
Service providers discussed several challenges and successes in providing culturally responsive
supports for newcomers. Some providers struggled to understand and prioritize newcomer
students’ underlying needs, often focusing instead on immediate challenges, such as language
barriers. Many, however, moved beyond identifying these proximate academic barriers,
reflecting on the underlying acculturative challenges that hindered school participation and
sense of belonging. As one district leader in Michigan offered,
[K]ids come from different environments. . . bring different baggage with them to school,
and if the school culture, the school system, and the school environment is not trained
enough to unpack, to help this child open their bag. . . I don’t think that we are meeting the
needs of the students. (KII_M1.13)
Several participants were also concerned about newcomers having experienced prior
trauma, described by one Harrisonburg provider as “specific social emotional needs. . . derived
Table 1. Key informants by location, position, and gender.
Austin Harrisonburg Detroit Metro Area Total
Total # of Providers 17 10 13 40
Male 5 4 5 14
Female 12 6 8 26
Affiliation
School 5 8 3 16
District 4 5 N/A 9
Community-based organization 8 5 2 15
Position
Service provider 5 3 10 18
Leadership 12 7 3 22
Note. District level was not an applicable category in DMA.
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from coming from a war-torn country or being a female in a certain refugee camp”
(KII_H1.04). In recounting these perceived needs, providers occasionally perpetuated stereo-
types associated with refugees, Arabs, or Muslims, with varying degrees of self-awareness of
their own biases. For instance, one Michigan provider explained that newcomer boys some-
times resisted personalized teacher support because of their so-called “Arabic mindset,” elabo-
rating that, because of “their ego, they can’t be special or singled out” (KII_M1.04). Others,
such as this Austin provider, noted a perceived conflict between what they considered to be
different newcomer groups, alarmed about “families being placed together who have hundreds
of years of historical conflict, and then putting them in the same classroom. . . to start learning
right away” (KII_A1.11/12).
Other providers were more adept at recognizing, even challenging their biases, such as one
Harrisonburg district leader who cautioned, “Just look at each [student] as unique. Do not
mainframe them or do not stereotype them” (KII_H1.04). For this participant, culturally
responsive education meant addressing each student as an individual, rather than as a repre-
sentative of a general group. Sometimes, such insights led providers to reflect on their own
privilege. One Michigan teacher shared:
. . .I was from my very white-centered perspective, and thinking, “Oh, I’m learning Arabic
and all these things.” And having that humble moment like, “Oh, maybe I’m not being as
clear with my teaching. Maybe I’m not really teaching as well as I thought I was” . . .. My
kids who know me, my phrase is: “Is this some crazy white people stuff?” Because some-
times I’ll give them a reference, and I’ll check myself, because as it’s coming out of my
mouth, I’m like, “No. They have no frame of reference.” (KII_M1.10)
Fig 1. A framework for understanding culturally responsive SEL in the contextof refugee resettlement.
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This participant recognized where gaps in understanding may have been fueled by contrast-
ing cultural frames of reference and adjusted their teaching as a result.
Providers demonstrated various SEL-informed ways in which they met challenges, over-
came biases, and provided services to support newcomers. Regarding shorter-term strategies, fac-
ulty in several schools offered walkthroughs to orient newcomers to their new school environment,
explaining features like fire alarms and appropriate school attire. Educators also modeled welcom-
ing practices for their students. In Austin, for instance, a participant recalled how a teacher had not
only emphasized the importance of pronouncing an incoming student’s name correctly but had
also brought in learning materials from the student’s country of origin, teaching the American stu-
dents to say “welcome” in Farsi. In the participant’s opinion, “that teacher was really making sure
that child was going to be embraced in that educational setting” (KII_A1.08).
Providers observed that many newcomers “have the academic chops. . . the motivation. . .
the work ethic. . . [to] be succeeding like crazy in these courses,” in the words of one Harrison-
burg participant, but often lacked the appropriate language support for meaningful engage-
ment (KII_H1.08). Several educators expanded language support options to be more culturally
responsive, such as by providing diaries where students could write in multiple languages,
making test adjustments, employing visual aids and games, and offering one-on-one attention
during group work. A few providers took these practices further by challenging didactic
instructional norms and leveling classroom power dynamics, such as one Michigan provider
who hosted “Ask the Teacher” moments, where students could pose questions and begin
building relationships in a more egalitarian environment (KII_M1.09).
In several schools, providers used restorative practices centered on nurturing healthy rela-
tionships, creating just and equitable learning environments, and repairing harm due to con-
flict or perceived misbehavior. Teachers often described their shift away from policing toward
“peacekeeper” (KII_M1.12), offering students space to process and share their experiences.
These approaches countered punitive practices for behaviors potentially resulting from accul-
turative stress and prompted providers to reflect on their own cultural frames, at times leading
to greater understanding of their students. In one such instance, a Michigan teacher realized
why a male student felt uncomfortable making eye contact with her and changed her approach
to make him more comfortable. She shared:
If I have a kid who’s reacting to something because this is what he has been socially incul-
cated with, there is no way that I’m gonna overcome that. . . by putting him in detention. . .
I spend the first two weeks of my school year developing relationships because I want the
kids to know that this is a safe place. . . (KII_M1.09)
Providers also used culturally responsive restorative practices with students who mistreated
newcomers, such as a boy in Austin who pulled off a student’s hijab (KII_A1.13). The teacher
engaged in harm reparation by asking questions and encouraging honest dialogue between the
students, halting future incidents and leading to increased confidence and wellbeing in the stu-
dent who was harmed. The teacher recalled asking the offending student, “why did you do it?”
and the boy responding, “I just didn’t. . . I was wrong, I shouldn’t have done it.” The teacher
went on to explain:
[H]e was trying to see what’s underneath [the hijab]. . . since we [were] able to shut it down
real fast, that little girl, now she runs up and down these hallways. . . she smiles, ‘Good
morning!. . . when it comes to cultural pieces like that, that’s how we approach. . . because
I’m a big advocate of restorative practice—it’s understanding the “whys” behind it.
(KII_A1.13)
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Many providers demonstrated their commitment to cultural responsiveness by centering
newcomer students as experts in their education. Some providers, for example, created listen-
ing spaces focused on students’ priorities, an exercise a few educators referred as “co-creating.”
Others went further, letting students take the lead. As one Michigan teacher shared,
. . .it’s made me think about teaching in a different way. I was never “sage on the stage” . . .
But, working with this particular group of students, I’ve really learned how to put the teach-
ing back on them. . . it’s not so much about me being the disseminator of knowledge, but
me being the resource in the room that helps them learn to learn. (KII_M1.10)
School climate
Service providers reported a variety of schoolwide measures to ensure that programs and poli-
cies were culturally responsive to newcomers. Participants across sites also reported common
resources constraints that hampered these efforts to varying degrees, including unmet transla-
tion needs, high student-teacher ratios, understaffed paraprofessional support, and a lack of
learning materials like computers. In some cases, broad school, district, and state education
policies also presented challenges for newcomers, whether in registering for classes, complet-
ing standardized exams, or meeting graduation requirements.
Schoolwide responses often started with special programs, such as multicultural celebra-
tions and welcome events. Newcomer-focused initiatives in some schools, however, led to
larger-scale systemic changes. One Austin school was “really intentional” about having a “halal
line” in the cafeteria (KII_A1.06). A Harrisonburg school converted a conference room into a
designated prayer space during Ramadan, created and advertised by the students and facili-
tated by local mosque leaders. These initiatives elevated schoolwide efforts from static concepts
of cultural competence to active processes of cultural exchange.
Schoolwide SEL initiatives usually included efforts both to support educators’ own SEL
through professional development and to integrate SEL for students throughout classrooms
and programs. Several providers expressed a particular need for greater schoolwide and even
systemwide investments in culturally responsive adult SEL. In one Austin administrator’s
words:
. . .adult SEL really needs to come first. . . We can’t ask our teachers to really model and
teach socioemotional strategies to students if they can’t manage their own emotions, or
don’t understand their own identity or can’t build relationships themselves. . . It goes all the
way up. . . from the boardroom to the living room. . . We need to make sure we’re extend-
ing this growth effort at all levels of leadership in the district. . .. because if you haven’t
examined your own beliefs around immigrants, refugees, Muslims, people of color. . . peo-
ple who speak Arabic. . . there’s gonna be some question about how you’re serving them in
your school. (KII_A1.01)
A Michigan provider relayed a similar message about schoolwide cultural responsiveness,
explaining, “I’m not talking about being an expert in all the cultures of your students that you
are teaching. . . actually, you cannot be. . .. [We] should establish the culture in the school that
we want to learn about each other” (KII_M1.13).
While a few providers thought that schoolwide SEL programs would provide “something
different” for newcomer students in particular (KII_M1.01), others emphasized the need to
“talk about [SEL] as whole community issues, and not, like, ‘these kids are special or broken’”
(KII_H1.07), in the words of one Harrisonburg participant. For these latter providers, SEL
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offered an opportunity for the entire school to create a climate of safety and inclusive support.
A Michigan teacher articulated the schoolwide SEL message they aimed to convey: “My
teacher is here for me, mentally and emotionally first. Where I’m at a 100% safe zone. And
then he’s here for me, she’s here for me, to educate me” (KII_M1.04).
Trainings were one of the most common schoolwide SEL initiatives, and they varied in per-
ceived scope and success in each site. Several providers thought of SEL trainings as opportuni-
ties to discuss ways to support newcomer students. Others found that SEL implementation was
too superficial, that trainings were one-off and unmemorable. Where routine trainings were
available, providers sometimes felt overwhelmed and stretched thin, with too many competing
priorities to be able to invest in ongoing professional development. In Austin, SEL trainings
were integrated in a new systemwide model focused on equity, power, identity, and belonging.
As one Austin district leader explained, compared to conventional SEL, this “SEL 2.0” included:
. . .a more explicit focus on equity around race and. . . economics. . . a more explicit under-
standing that there’s SEL, and [an] upper middle class, white suburban neighborhood can
look very different from what SEL is in a neighborhood that has lots of refugee students or
that’s predominantly African-American or that has lots of poverty. . . Understanding your
own identity linguistically and culturally. . . having the cross-cultural, cultural competence
to make the connections and relationships with others who are different from you.
(KII_A1.01)
Several schools had begun employing frameworks around restorative justice and trauma-
informed care as well, though there were fewer formalized programs compared to schoolwide
SEL. Providers mentioned policies that centered healthy relationships through practices such
as primary prevention, conflict de-escalation, and mediation, rather than conventional zero
tolerance policies that favor punishment. For instance, students in one school had “a space
where kids can go. . . instead of sending them to the office, if they are angry or they shouldn’t
be in the classroom because they are misbehaving, then they could go to this room” to relax
(KII_M1.06). Multi-level behavioral support strategies were in place at some schools, connect-
ing teachers, administration, and social workers in these efforts.
On occasion, restorative justice was embedded into the school’s operations at all levels—
from classroom training, to specific policies, to considerations for student-school communica-
tion—such as this Michigan school’s preventative response to bullying:
. . .we push into every single classroom and we tailor it to their age, to their grade level, and
we go over what bullying is, what an upstander/bystander is. Various methods to communi-
cate to your teachers or office staff and administrators. We ensure them that we’re here to
support you. . .. I tell the students that if you don’t want to talk to a teacher. . . you write a
note and stick it underneath the door. Or. . . they email me or whoever they feel comfort-
able emailing, and we deal with the bully. . .. and if we notice that the bully needs counsel-
ing, then we sit with the parents and start designing that plan. (KII_M1.04)
In this instance, schools gave students the flexibility to report to school personnel via mech-
anisms that felt most comfortable to them, reducing barriers to reporting, strengthening rela-
tionships with providers, and centering student autonomy, while also prioritizing mental
health and psychosocial support for the student using harm, rather than punishment. Such
efforts also strengthened SEL competencies, while considering their needs and behavior in the
context of their previous experiences, helping providers to “understand kids and why they
might be acting a certain way” (KII_H1.04).
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Family and community partnerships
A crucial support for newcomer students involved school engagement with families and commu-
nities, which helped to narrow the acculturative gap between adolescents and their adult family
members. One Michigan school leader viewed the school as a “community learning center,”
stressing the importance of “the students feel[ing] there is a bond between the family and the
school” (KII_M1.03). While providers identified several challenges that newcomer families faced
when engaging school systems, they also identified ways in which the school and community part-
ners successfully partnered for the benefit of students’ educational growth and sense of belonging.
Common challenges that newcomer families encountered included access to stable jobs
and decent incomes, affordable and safe housing, and transportation. However, providers also
discussed a number of intercultural challenges in family engagement. In addition to language
barriers, providers often felt that “it’s a challenge to get parents to understand what the system
is and how to make the system work for them,” in the words of one Harrisonburg participant
(KII_H1.04). Such challenges may have resulted in part from institutional differences between
national education systems and a range of differences related to school norms (e.g., dress
code), practices (e.g., homeroom), values (e.g., SEL), and parental roles in education. Providers
noted that, while parents “see us as the experts. . . they’re the parents” (KII_M1.09) and there is
a limit to what schools can accomplish without their partnership—a perspective on parental
roles in education that may have been new to some parents.
Providers also struggled to navigate perceived cultural differences in their interactions with
families, such as with gender norms and roles, which vary within and across MENA groups.
These providers noted that women caregivers sometimes could not attend events alone, meet
with a male teacher or administrator, or drive, which limited school engagement. Providers
sometimes had difficulty explaining restorative and trauma-informed practices to families, as
articulated by this Michigan provider:
It’s just, some of these kids, when they realize that school here is not gonna hit them, they
act out a lot more. . . And we have a hard time getting the families to understand that, ‘No,
we are not gonna hit your child. . . but, they are still expected to do x.’ And the parents
don’t understand, ‘Well, if you’re not gonna hit them, how are you gonna get them to do
it?’ (KII_M1.10)
Engaging families in students’ SEL often involved explaining the “why” behind the model
to families in a culturally responsive way. In the words of one Austin provider, the challenge
was “to introduce [SEL] and talk about it and not make it a taboo” (KII_A1.04).
Providers respected families’ commitment to sustaining newcomer students’ connection
with their heritage cultures, while also depending upon families to help minimize acculturative
stress. They reported difficulties in striking this balance. The message for parents, according to
one Michigan provider was:
. . .we want you to teach Arabic to your children. . . that’s hugely important to your culture
and your family. But we also need you to understand that, as long as they’re here in the
United States, they’re gonna function better if they understand English (KII_M1.09).
Despite these challenges, providers utilized several strategies for engaging families mean-
ingfully. A necessary, if insufficient, first step, according to several participants, was to recog-
nize the obstacles and devise intentional supports to make schools more accessible for
newcomer families. In the words of one Harrisonburg district leader:
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. . .when we have such a diverse community—over 70 languages—cultural background and
understanding of the responsibilities and roles of a parent or a family within a child’s educa-
tion is very different. So, we really try to find a way to make it easy to navigate, easy to
understand for families, simple ways to get involved, and really becoming very intentional
in looking at. . . some of the barriers that typically have prevented families from coming
into our schools, and how to remove those and create a more accessible means of interact-
ing with us. . . (KII_H1.06)
One innovative way that several schools mitigated these challenges was by hiring parapro-
fessional liaisons that shared cultural heritage with newcomer students. According to one Har-
risonburg participant, these liaisons served a variety of functions: “they interpret; they
translate; they advocate for families; they serve as a bridge between the community and the
school” (KII_H1.06). Across study sites, Arabic-speaking liaisons from the MENA region,
some of whom had also been resettled as refugees, frequently met with families and fostered
connections with community organizations, aiding newcomers with services ranging from
tutoring, language courses, and daycare, to mental health and psychosocial support. An Austin
district leader described the role of the school liaison as “helping the families in a way that is
respectful to the system we’re working in. Relationship-building. Collaboration. Listening.
Making mistakes and learning from them” (KII_A1.03).
Liaisons were not the only bridge offered to families. In many schools, family members
were connected to individual teachers, social workers, and administrators. In Michigan, for
example, participants explained that one of the principals had developed strong ties with the
community. In one teacher’s words:
I have seen these parents. . . keep in contact with the principal. . . He was an immigrant
from before, and he kinda gets them and he gets where they come from. . . He works with
them and he does his best to make it comfortable for them. . . it’s just, it’s very like a close
community. . . (KII_M1.01)
While this participant was surprised to see families with the principal’s phone number, they
noted that this close tie between families and administrators led to increased belonging.
Through these school-facilitated connections, in the words of one Austin provider, “. . .to
have the school initiate those conversations and say ‘we see you and we see your child and we
have resources for you’. . . then it really roots in the community, and [families] feel empow-
ered. . .” (KII_A1.12/11). Providers benefited from these connections also, as they came to
understand and honor the vast contribution that families have to offer. In the words of one
Harrisonburg district leader:
We recognize that they have knowledge and wisdom and they have all these assets that they
need to be part of a conversation, right? And they not only need to be invited, but they need
to be included and they need to feel like they have a share, you know, responsibility at the
table, and that their input is greatly appreciated. (KII_H1.06)
These partnerships centered the cultural exchange between providers and families as they
worked together to support newcomer students.
Discussion
This study illuminates the central but understudied role that public services—specifically
schools—play in refugee incorporation and acculturation after resettlement. Across study
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sites, schools and providers attempted to support newcomer adjustment while both adapting
to and learning from their new students. The SEL initiatives being implemented in these
schools, with their focus on promoting strong relationships founded on social awareness and
empathy, provided a unique opportunity to observe how educational practices at the level of
individual provider (adult SEL), school (school climate), and community (family partnerships)
responded to the needs and preferences of newcomers from the MENA region. Guided by the
framework of culturally responsive pedagogy, we identified several promising approaches that
may merit further examination, but also systemwide shortcomings in school responsiveness to
these students and their families. Below, we discuss implications of these findings for efforts to
deliver culturally responsive SEL, draw attention to the critical importance of distinguishing
between cultural and structural sources of inequality in devising and delivering responsive
supports, and consider how these lessons extend across sectors and disciplinary traditions.
Going all the way up: Cultural responsiveness from the student to the
system
Considerable variation in school and provider supports for newcomers points to the impor-
tance of integrating cultural responsiveness into systemwide SEL efforts at the level of the dis-
trict/division and perhaps beyond. CASEL, whose universal model informed SEL initiatives in
several study sites, has begun to transform its approach by adopting an equity lens that centers
social identity, cultural assets, the role of power, and belonging [51]. Efforts to map the various
models beyond CASEL have drawn attention to additional opportunities for integrating these
principles into SEL initiatives [38]. Findings from this study attest to the critical value of imple-
menting transformative approaches that take newcomers into account, not only at the student
curricular level, but also in adult SEL, in school climate, and in community partnerships.
While the burgeoning literature on bureaucratic incorporation underscores the importance
of professional norms in cultivating more welcoming, inclusive services, our findings indicate
that the norms underpinning cultural responsiveness had not been evenly understood or
adopted within the selected schools [18–19]. The continued tendency among even the most
well-intentioned service providers to misunderstand newcomers and resort to cultural stereo-
types in our sites indicates a need not only for greater diffusion of welcoming policies and sus-
tained CRP professional development, but also for routine self- and climate-assessments. Such
measures would help to ensure that individuals and systems are not doing harm, but instead
nourishing a sense of belonging among all students [8]. Indeed, several providers who had
benefited from culturally responsive adult SEL programming reportedly questioned their own
frames of reference and biases, actively learned from resettled students, and committed them-
selves to more flexible, inclusive pedagogies—a pattern that warrants further study.
Efforts to promote an inclusive school climate also varied in their degree of cultural respon-
siveness. Although many participants considered practices such as multicultural celebration
days and orientation walk-throughs to be promising, some also felt that such activities would
fall short without lasting efforts to cultivate a schoolwide environment of cross-cultural
exchange and inclusion. These sentiments find support in the education literature, where
scholars have argued that symbolic, one-off events celebrating fixed concepts of culture, rather
than promoting meaningful exchange or identity development, can “mask, rather than
address, serious equity concerns” [52]. Examples of longer-term, systemic changes imple-
mented by schools included halal food cafeteria lines and prayer spaces, which not only
showed respect for newcomers’ traditions and beliefs, but also helped to sustain them through
integration into the everyday school climate. Further, school administrations, such as HCPS,
had institutionalized their commitment to welcoming newcomers by enshrining equity as a
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key objective in their strategy plan and issuing a division-wide statement of inclusivity [44].
Future studies should examine how systemwide efforts like these contribute to school climate
and to newcomer educational and acculturation outcomes, as well as how such efforts relate to
broader patterns of refugee receptiveness beyond the education system, whether in other pub-
lic service systems or in the wider sociopolitical context [17]. For example, it would be worth-
while to investigate the degree to which meaningfully inclusive public service initiatives might
shield newcomers from the determinantal effects of hostile policy environments and wide-
spread anti-immigrant sentiment [53].
Finally, although education systems often struggled to engage newcomer families as a result of
complex access barriers, several schools had developed innovative solutions to involve caregivers
more meaningfully in student education. In particular, some schools hired and trained Arabic-
speaking paraprofessional liaisons as cultural mediators that worked closely with students and
teachers and brokered enduring connections with families and community organizations. Mean-
while, energetic school and district leaders learned from these liaisons in order to improve their
relationships with students and their caregivers. Such examples reflect the value of systemwide
investments in developing adult SEL skills related to social identity and relationship-building
and in hiring personnel that reflect the makeup of the student population [37,51,54].
Cultural responsiveness is also about structural inequality
A common challenge among providers was disentangling how newcomers’ needs and prefer-
ences related to their acculturation, racial or ethnic identity, refugee status, prior experiences
of conflict and displacement, and current socioeconomic position, all of which were com-
monly misinterpreted as perceived “cultural differences.” However, these assumptions were
often inappropriate, and the fixation on cultural differences clouded the underlying needs of
students, a phenomenon that scholars have repeatedly pointed out in a variety of contexts [52,
55,56]. For instance, teachers blamed students’ academic difficulties on language barriers,
rather than the lack of resources to hire paraprofessionals and provide appropriate learning
materials to students. Another provider evoked stereotypes about Arab masculine egos to
explain why some students did not like personalized teacher attention, rather than recognizing
that many students—of all backgrounds—preferred not to be singled out by authority figures.
Attributing these educational outcomes to social identity or values, rather than to the funda-
mental causes of social, political, and economic inequality, risks placing blame on students and
the groups to which they belong, while also directing scarce educational resources to solving
the wrong problem. Such tendencies attest to the potential value of school administrations
such as AISD investing in professional development sessions focused on identifying and
responding to the unique challenges that conflict-affected populations face as they adjust to U.
S. public schools [45].
In recent years, scholars and practitioners have recognized the need to address this chal-
lenge more systemically and have proposed a variety of frameworks—such as structural com-
petency, equity literacy, and culturally responsive pedagogy—that focus on preparing service
providers to recognize how structural inequality and life experiences might condition individ-
uals’ resources, behavior, and performance [52,57]. Our findings reflect the critical relevance
of such frameworks and demonstrate the particular utility of CRP for the case of social and
emotional learning. A framework born of Black educators striving to make schools more sup-
portive for historically excluded, non-white, and especially Black American students [30,31],
CRP offers a wealth of resources for promoting inclusion and belonging among students reset-
tled from the MENA region. Although there are parallels and intersections between the experi-
ences of these student populations, especially as refugees of color become racialized over time
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in the U.S. [11], there may also be substantial differences in the experiences, needs, and prefer-
ences of resettled refugees, which warrant close attention using a culturally responsive frame-
work. This study contributes to a growing literature expanding CRP to include newcomer
students more explicitly [32], an important area for continued research.
Significance for public health services
These findings have implications well beyond education. Cultural responsiveness is applicable
to a range of public services, including medicine, psychology, and public health. These fields
have often focused on narrower efforts to tailor existing interventions to new populations
through cultural adaptation or to build awareness among clinicians through cultural compe-
tence trainings. As several scholars have argued, such limited conceptions of the relationship
between culture and health are not only insufficient for overcoming health disparities, but also
risk reinforcing static concepts of cultural identity, reproducing cultural stereotypes (e.g., of
the form “x people don’t like y”), and distracting from systems-level change [7,58]. CRP, by
contrast, offers a systemic change approach that involves providers, policymakers, and com-
munities in efforts to foster an understanding of the structural determinants of health, recog-
nize and bolster newcomer strengths, and deliver services that respect health beliefs, values,
and practices [29]. In this way, applying the insights and lessons of CRP may inform continued
efforts to produce more inclusive health practices.
Given the centrality of public services in supporting the resettlement and incorporation of
newcomers, further research should aim to ascertain the degree to which frontline service pro-
viders, such as resettlement offices, human services departments, workforce development
boards, and health clinics provide culturally responsive supports. Researchers would do well to
work with these providers to determine which culturally responsive strategies are most feasi-
ble, effective, and appropriate, given population needs and resource availability concerns. Such
research would be especially beneficial for efforts to rebuild the U.S. Refugee Admissions Pro-
gram under the Biden administration [59]. In order to guide the growth of this scholarship,
moreover, researchers from across disciplines should aim to develop a shared cultural respon-
siveness framework that bridges lessons learned from education, public health, psychology,
and other disciplinary traditions focused on serving diverse publics.
Several study limitations are worth noting. The study did not systematically evaluate SEL in
these schools and should not be seen as an assessment of its implementation or effectiveness.
Nor did the study include policymakers beyond the school district/division level, though fur-
ther research with such participants would likely produce valuable insights into how public
policies, budgetary concerns, public attitudes towards immigrants, and other aspects of the
sociopolitical context influence refugee receptiveness in schools [17,19]. This analysis focused
only on the perspectives of service providers, principally educators, though articles reporting
on the perspectives of refugee students and families in this study have been published else-
where [35,40,60]. We used purposive sampling to select study sites where school districts had
a relatively high degree of support for resettled refugees. Whereas this selection strategy was
designed to secure safe participation, providers from schools with less structured program-
ming for newcomer students may have reported different experiences. Thus, these results can-
not be generalized to the entire population of providers working with newcomer youth from
the MENA region.
Conclusions
Schools play a central role in welcoming young refugees after resettlement, but they also risk
exacerbating acculturative stress when they make newcomers feel unwelcome or pressure them
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to assimilate. Newcomers and service providers across study sites encountered numerous obsta-
cles to meaningful engagement, while often also overcoming those challenges in innovative
ways that sometimes recognized and drew upon the cultural assets of newcomer students and
their families. This study highlights the opportunities that schoolwide SEL efforts offer for sup-
porting newcomer incorporation and belonging through measures to enhance culturally
responsive adult social and emotional learning, to cultivate more welcoming and inclusive
school climates, and to develop strong relationships with newcomer families and communities.
Supporting information
S1 File. Semi-structured interview guide–key informants. This is the semi-structured inter-
view guide used with key informants. Specific question wording and probing questions were
modified by interviewers during the course of field work in order to adjust to the local context
and to the information being shared by participants.
(DOCX)
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to Jeremy Aldrich and Wafa Hassan for all their contin-
ued support and assistance with this study. We would also like to thank the Migration Work-
ing Group at Brown University for their helpful feedback and, in particular, Andrea Flores,
Zhenchao Qian, John Logan, and Michael White.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Cyril Bennouna, Hannah Brumbaum, Molly M. McLay, Carine Allaf,
Michael Wessells, Lindsay Stark.
Data curation: Cyril Bennouna, Lindsay Stark.
Formal analysis: Cyril Bennouna, Hannah Brumbaum, Molly M. McLay, Lindsay Stark.
Funding acquisition: Carine Allaf, Michael Wessells, Lindsay Stark.
Investigation: Cyril Bennouna, Lindsay Stark.
Methodology: Cyril Bennouna, Lindsay Stark.
Project administration: Cyril Bennouna, Lindsay Stark.
Resources: Carine Allaf, Lindsay Stark.
Supervision: Michael Wessells, Lindsay Stark.
Validation: Cyril Bennouna, Lindsay Stark.
Visualization: Hannah Brumbaum.
Writing – original draft: Cyril Bennouna, Hannah Brumbaum, Molly M. McLay, Lindsay
Stark.
Writing – review & editing: Cyril Bennouna, Hannah Brumbaum, Molly M. McLay, Carine
Allaf, Michael Wessells, Lindsay Stark.
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