Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) for young refugees and asylum seekers

This project explores Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) for young refugees and asylum seekers outside of the formal education system in the North East. It seeks to develop ideas for such SOLEs together with young refugees and asylum seekers through a co-design and action-based approach. The two main questions guiding this project are:

  • "How can co-designed SOLEs create a space for young refugee and asylum seekers’ learning and interaction?" and
  • "How can co-designed SOLEs improve young refugee and asylum seekers’ learning and wellbeing?". 

The project is a collaboration between researchers, staff and volunteers from Newcastle University, Northumbria University and North East Solidarity and Teaching (N.E.S.T.):

  • Ahmed Kharrufa and Denise Lengyel, both from Open Lab at the School of Computing, Newcastle University, UK
  • Reem Talhouk from the School of Design, Northumbria University, UK
  • James Stanfield from the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK
  • MBE Bridget L. Stratford and Haley Powers from N.E.S.T. UK

We initiated the first phase of the project with a co-design phase where we explored the potential use of digital technologies for self-organised learning with young refugees and asylum seekers. For this, we ran three workshops in the winter of 2022 with nine children and young people (aged 11 to 15) who currently access the services of N.E.S.T. These workshops were aimed at exploring how the young refugees and asylum seekers learn through and with existing digital platforms outside of school. This provided (preliminary) insights on their digital and social learning-ecosystem, availability of and access to technology as well as their thoughts on benefits and challenges of online technologies, including issues of online health and safety, wellbeing and sustainability. In this co-design phase, we used a variety of arts-based and 'traditional' co-design methods with the participants, such as draw-and-write, card-facilitated storytelling, role-playing, pupil view templates, observation and group discussions.

We are currently planning the second phase of the project which is the pilot phase. This will aim at ideating and co-designing a SOLE with the young refugees and asylum seekers.