S5E2 - Are Refugee Children Learning?

Behind the Pages, the podcast of the Journal on Education in Emergencies, features exciting and timely conversations with JEiE authors about their work on education in regions affected by crisis and conflict. The Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya is one of the largest and oldest refugee camps in the world, with refugees coming from at least nine nearby countries. In this episode, Benjamin Piper and Sarah Dryden-Peterson discuss the factors that influence early grade reading and suggest that focusing on education quality is important for improving literacy outcomes. In their article “Are Refugee Children Learning? Early Grade Literacy in a Refugee Camp in Kenya,” Piper, Dryden-Peterson, and co-authors Vidur Chopra, Celia Reddick, and Arbogast Oyanga show that for students in Grades 1 through 3 in Kakuma refugee camp, learning to read is related, in part, to their country of origin, mother tongue, and expectations for returning to their home country.