The Letterbox Club: the impact on looked-after children and their carers of a national project aimed at raising achievements in literacy for children aged 7 to 11 in foster care

This paper considers the initial impact of a national project funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families which provides books, number activities and stationery items (once a month over a 6-month period) directly to children aged 7–11 in their foster homes. The context of the project, established against a background of low attainment in literacy among looked-after children in foster care in the UK, is explored. This paper focuses explicitly on the impact of the reading materials on the children who received them and on other people within the children's foster care environment. Particular reference is made to issues of ownership, textual preference and use of or engagement with the reading books, together with the implications that these findings may have for future work in this field both nationally and internationally.     

Japan’s English-medium instruction initiatives and the globalization of higher education

This article analyzes a recent initiative of Japan’s Ministry of Education, which aims to internationalize higher education in Japan. The large-investment project “Top Global University Project” (TGUP) has emerged to create globally oriented universities, to increase the role of foreign languages in higher education, and to foster global human resources. The TGUP identifies 37 universities: 13 as “top global universities” intended to compete in the top 100 university world rankings and 24 “global traction universities” intended to lead the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Despite the substantial funding behind this initiative, little research has been conducted to evaluate the potential impact of this policy on language planning in higher education in Japan. This paper addresses this gap in its exploration of the TGUP, including key changes from previous internationalization policies. It then presents an analysis of publicly available documents regarding the policy, collected from all 37 of the participant universities. Findings indicate a positive departure from older policy trends and the emergence of flexible, unique forms of English language education in Japan’s universities.     

Resettled Refugee Youths’ Stories of Migration,Schooling, and Future: Challenging Dominant Narratives About Refugees

In the United States and around the world, refugees are frequently portrayed as helpless victims, burdens of the host society, and potential criminals. Similarly, in schools even well-intentioned educators focus on what they lack, rather than the various stories, experiences, and perspectives they have to offer. To provide another perspective, we aim to find ways to empower resettled refugee youth and draw implications for education of former refugees and other marginalized students. Through interviews, we sought to understand the stories of ten former Burmese refugee adolescents with respect to their backgrounds, migration, and school experiences. Our analysis shows that they recognized their marginalized positionings in the United States that are attributable to their limited English proficiency, ethnicity and race, and former refugee status. They, however, authored narratives of themselves that contest such marginalizing narratives by providing diverse stories of refugees different from dominant ones and positioning themselves as valuable members of local communities and change agents for a more equitable society. These findings call for pedagogical approaches in which schools and communities provide space for stories that former refugee youths bring, value stories authored by them, and draw on their perspectives on inequity and social transformation.