Curriculum and knowledge production for refugee children: national and international contexts

The objective of the present study has been to understand to what extent national and international research indicates practices of welcoming refugees and what educational challenges and potentials are presented. We started with the definition of refugee proposed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2015): Refugees are people who have escaped armed conflict or persecution. Often, their situation is so dangerous and intolerable that they must cross international borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and then become an internationally recognized 'refugee', with access to assistance from states, the UNHCR and other organizations. (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2015). Our theoretical reference is based on a multicultural curriculum taking into account the issue of refugees. Candau and Ivenicki (2024) suggest that decolonial multi/intercultural curricular perspective highlights processes that produce subcultures and hybrid identities. Refugee children can be enablers of a multicultural curriculum, compared to a traditional curriculum, which prioritizes textbook content that is disconnected from the students' reality. Methodology was based on documentary analysis of the following academic sites: Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (BDTD), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), and the international platform Institute of Education Sciences (ERIC). Data Analysis showed that in the BDTD, two studies dealt with refugee education and legislation in Brazil. Grazjer (2018) focuses on the legislative reception of refugee children in Brazil, demonstrating that Brazilian legislation can be improved to better welcome this public. Santana's work (2020) focused on the reception of refugee children, based on reports from educators in schools in São Paulo/SP. The work points to challenges in welcoming refugee children, such as linguistic and cultural differences. In SciELO, we found two papers that address the issue of refugee education. Russo, Mendes and Borri-Anadon (2020) interviewed ten primary school teachers at a municipal school who reported that the refugee children suffered racism and xenophobia, but this served as a catalyst for rethinking school practices. Almeida, Santos and Silva (2020) monitored a Congolese refugee child in a municipal school for two school months, showing racism and xenophobia she experienced, as reported by her teacher. On the ERIC platform, we identified a total of 243 works produced during this period. We observed an exponential increase in research from 2016 onwards, driven by the Syrian refugee crisis. Another significant spike in the production of papers occurred from 2020, during the covid-19 pandemic, with 39 articles published, compared to 23 the previous year. The articles within this nine-year period focused more on the difficulties experienced by refugees than on the potential of the refugee public's presence in their new country. Discussion and Conclusions Brazilian research on refugee education has a different focus from the international scenario, as evidenced by the present study. Brazilian productions emphasize the construction of welcoming spaces for refugee children through public policies. In contrast, the international papers highlighted international conventions, such as the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Also, xenophobia was widely reported, involving students, teachers and society in general. On the other hand, in the national articles, this issue was not emphasized; the difficulties of reception are more related to social inequality, even though there are efforts on the part of schools and institutional actors to provide a minimally welcoming space. Unlike the Brazilian scenario, in which xenophobia was practiced by a group of students towards a refugee child (Almeida; Santos; Silva, 2020), in the international scenario there are reports of teachers openly rejecting the presence of refugee children in the classroom (Rahman; Shindaini; Abdullah, 2023). This type of attitude has not been identified in research carried out in Brazil. We emphasize the need for continuing training for teachers, with a focus on multicultural curriculum (Candau; Ivenicki, 2024) that values cultural diversity, as well as strategies for teaching Portuguese as a second language in the Brazilian case or other languages in foreign cases. Investing in teacher training and resources is essential to ensure the integration of refugee children in Brazilian and foreign schools. In addition, Brazilian laws, although adequate to protect national children, need to be rethought to meet the specific demands of refugee children. 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