From silence to academic engagement: How refugee children with disabilities access learning through inclusive ‘artful’ schools in Canada

Many newcomer children spend a ‘silent year’ in elementary school classrooms while they adjust to a new culture and language. This often delays inclusion in learning and forming friendships with peers. For refugee children with disabilities (RCDs) this phase may last for 3 years or more, impacting their mental health and sense of belonging, and potentially worsening issues they carry from experiences of war and violence. This paper suggests that these barriers might be overcome through capitalising on strategies that circumvent spoken language by relying on the universal language of art. While making art, children naturally explore their identities, decide how they will present themselves to others, find meaning in a healing narrative and safely process bad memories. The main goal of the study was to uncover hidden ‘knowledge of self and others’ through an arts-based research approach. Five arts education and art therapy methods with 49 children (aged 7–9) were implemented and evaluated, including self-portraits, emoji games, read-aloud story books, paper-bag puppets and digital stories. Findings reveal that over time, students undergo noticeable changes in their cognitive and affective understandings with exposure to art, and improve their language ability, self-esteem and well-being. An unexpected outcome was how the arts may scaffold RCDs into academic learning earlier than expected. Examples of student art are included in Appendix A.