Refugee-background students’ biographical perspectives as the enablers of praxis in Australia’s EAL/D classrooms: a scoping review

Abstract This scoping review explored refugee-background students’ biographical perspectives, including their lived histories, experiences, and linguistic, cultural, and social capital, as enabling praxis in Australia’s English as an Additional Language/Dialect EAL/D classrooms. Guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, 25 studies (010-2025) were systematically reviewed. Grounded in a praxis-oriented and intra-categorical understanding of diversity, this study conceptualises biographical perspectives (BPs) as relational constructs shaping how refugee-background students (RBS) think, act, and relate within the EAL/D classroom. Analysis revealed four interrelated themes: lived histories and forms of capital, resource mobilisation, visibility, and belonging, showing that BPs operate relationally across these dimensions. The reviewed studies conceptualised RBS’ BPs as individual resources for participation and learning. Yet they overlooked their structural and relational dimensions, leaving a conceptual gap between recognising BPs as habitus and theorising it as praxis shaped by power and inequality. Accordingly, these studies lacked the use of a praxis-oriented and intersectional lens that situates BPs as the analytical and transformative core of classroom life. This review, therefore, calls for praxis-oriented research adopting Bourdieu’s relational sociology from the analytical lens of intra-categorical intersectionality to reconceptualise BPs as enablers of pedagogical transformation, bridging identity, structure, and inclusion.