Engagement and Educational Equity: Ukrainian Refugees’ Experiences in the Community College Second Language Writing Classroom

With an overwhelming increase in refugees around the world (UNHCR, 2023) and a growing number of immigrant students in higher education (Batalova & Feldblum, 2023), the need for enhancing refugees’ engagement, and subsequently, ensuring educational equity, becomes even more urgent. In U.S. community colleges, classrooms are a key site of engagement; since students have multiple responsibilities at home and work, they therefore have limited opportunities to engage with their college community outside of class time (Lancaster & Lundberg, 2019). While prior studies have focused broadly on student engagement in the classroom, there remains little research on the engagement of refugee English learners (RELs) in community college classrooms (Leo, 2021). In this qualitative multiple-case study, we explore how refugees engage in our English as a Second Language (ESL) writing classrooms at a large, urban community college and how faculty can better bolster engagement and ensure educational equity. The following three research questions guided our inquiry: (1) How do RELs in second language (L2) community college writing classrooms define engagement? (2) What is RELs’ engagement in L2 community college writing classrooms? (3) How do faculty support RELs’ engagement and ensure educational equity in the writing classroom? Our findings reveal that RELs connect engagement with motivation, community, and participation in class. As multilingual writers, RELs feel most engaged when they are in a supportive classroom community, assignments are relevant to their interests, and they have ample opportunities to interact with classmates. Overall, asset-based pedagogies are most effective in enhancing engagement and educational equity.