With partners:
Theme 2: Expectations of Self, Family & Teachers
In this theme, students from Arabic-speaking backgrounds reflect on issues of gender and educational expectations. Young people in general, and those from Arab-speaking backgrounds in particular, have common everyday issues which are often influenced strongly by gender. Girls experience a particular set of challenges in relation to: freedom to engage in certain extracurricular or sporting activities; parental concerns about health and sex education; preconceptions about gender roles and employment expectations; and, for those girls who wear the hijab, a visible public identification as a Muslim, and often negative preconceptions about its meaning.
Boys have another set of cultural expectations and challenges in terms of their positions within the family, their relationships to women, differing cultural expectations of men, and negative media representations of young men from Arabic-speaking backgrounds. Like many second-generation migrants, both boys and girls commonly deal with cultural and religious preconceptions of social mobility and identity inside and outside the family. More generally, students can be challenged by their parents’ understanding of the education system, sometimes due to a limited or different experience of school in another country. This may manifest itself in a fairly loose attitude towards timelines, absenteeism and homework. Teachers with substantial experience in dealing with students from non-English speaking backgrounds stress the need for early intervention and pathway planning for these students. This aims to prevent the students becoming disillusioned and lost in the education system.