Generation Interrupted: Rethinking “Students with Interrupted Formal Education” (SIFE) in the Wake of a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling worldwide, compelling educators, researchers, and policymakers to grapple with the implications of these interruptions. However, while the scale of these disruptions may be unprecedented, for many students, interrupted schooling is not a new phenomenon. In this article, I draw insights from the field of Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) for supporting students who experience schooling interruption. In addition, I argue that the extensive accommodations offered to students in the midst of the pandemic must be preserved for future generations of SIFE students—a population for whom similar accommodations have been historically denied. Through this analysis, I demonstrate the need to interrogate traditional notions of interrupted schooling and the students who experience it. This article offers implications for rethinking interrupted schooling, as well as formal education writ large, toward more equitable and socially just ends.

Professional Learning Recommendations for Teachers of Late-Entering Newcomers With Interrupted Formal Education

This chapter reviews the academic literature on late-entering students with interrupted formal education (SIFE), many of whom are refugees or asylum seekers, in order to gain a better understanding of how to serve these students and support their teachers. The literature suggests that school personnel who are serving late-entering SIFE (i.e., arriving in the United States at high school age) require additional support, resources, and on-going professional learning. The purpose of this chapter is to provide recommendations for district-wide professional learning based upon the challenges and promising practices that emerged in the literature review. Although this chapter focuses on the educational context in the United States, the recommendations may apply elsewhere.

Developing Oral Comprehension Skills with Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education

The development of oral comprehension skills is rarely studied in second and foreign language teaching, let alone in learning contexts involving students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE). Thus, we conducted a mixed-methods study attempting to measure the effect of implicit teaching of oral comprehension strategies with 37 SLIFE in Quebec City, a predominantly French-speaking city in Canada. Two experimental groups received implicit training in listening strategies, whereas a control group viewed the same documents without strategy training. Participants’ listening comprehension performance was measured quantitatively before the treatment, immediately after, and one week later with three different versions of an oral comprehension test targeting both explicit and implicit content of authentic audiovisual documents. Overall, data analysis showed a low success rate for all participants in the oral comprehension tests, with no significant effect of the experimental treatment. However, data from the intervention sessions revealed that the participants’ verbalisations of their comprehension varied qualitatively over time. The combination of these results is discussed in light of previous findings on low literate adults’ informal and formal language learning experiences.