September 2025 Featured Member Spotlight

Chatwara Suwannamai Duran, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Houston

Aijuan Cun , Assistant Professor of Literacy, The University of New Mexico

Journal Article: Transnational literacies and praxis responding to refugee-background students and their families from Burma/Myanmar

While Southeast Asian countries are gearing up toward being internationally recognizable in their economics, tourism, education, and their English proficiency competitiveness, refugee-background populations are often minoritized. Traumatic past and forced migration make refugee-background students different from traditional students. It is vital to attend to their needs and values not only because they are vulnerable citizens but they have “rights to health, education and protection” (United Nations, 2023). Drawing on our experiences working closely with refugee-background students and their families from Myanmar in multiyear ethnographic studies, we emphasize transnationalism, multilingualism, and multimodal literacies that draw out their potential. Our studies showcase refugee-background families from Myanmar but residing in two U.S. cities where English is a dominant language. The research findings suggest the interconnection of transnational literacies (Warriner, 2007), cultural artifacts, narratives, and learner's agency that can be utilized to address the students' accumulated linguistic and literacy resources. In addition to providing empirical evidence and their collective praxis, we offer practical implications for English language classrooms that work functionally with refugee-background students who have been through trauma and obstacles yet gained hard-earned knowledge along the way of their migrations.

To cite

Duran, C. S., & Cun, A. (2025). Transnational literacies and praxis responding to refugee‐background students and their families from Burma/Myanmar.  TESOL Journal, 16(1), e898.

 

Link to Article