Professor Loshini Naidoo

Methods

Qualitative research

Ethnography

Design Research

Participatory Research (Students/Teachers)

Visual methods

Thematic and content analysis

Research Focus

Equity & Access

Teaching Education

Community engagement

Concepts/Focus

Critical anthropological and sociological perspectives

Human Rights

Engaged pedagogy

Dr Loshini Naidoo is a Professor in the School of Education at Western Sydney University and a Senior Researcher in the Centre for Educational Research. Dr Naidoo specialises in social justice education at Western Sydney University. She has established a flourishing research profile on equity and access in disadvantaged communities both nationally and internationally. She has authored and edited several books; published peer-review reports, journal articles and book chapters of both national and international repute, established international links with renowned scholars and obtained internal and external research grants. She has made a significant contribution to refugee education as a socially just practice/praxis through the lens of forced migration. Her leadership of the Refugee Action Support Program and the National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools provides a tangible collaborative platform for her work on cross-cultural issues in challenging demographics. She has won multiple Australian teaching awards including an international award from Duke University, North Carolina, for her outstanding work as an educator. She studied forced migration at Oxford University and was one of eight distinguished keynote speakers invited by the prestigious Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to speak on refugee education. She served on the NSW refugee resettlement roundtable and her work has been used by the Department of Social Services in its cultural orientation program for newly arrived Syrian refugees.

Recent Projects

Redefining educational activism in precarious times: a collaborative inquiry

Sally Baker, Loshini Naidoo, Maya Cranitch, Sara Kindon, Rachel Burke, Melanie Baak, Jonnell Upton, Karen Dunwoodie, Jacqueline Stevenson, Clemence Due, Carolina Fleay, Lisa Hartley, Alison Phipps, Vivienne Anderson, Rebecca Murray, Anna Ziersch

In this study, we are particularly interested in examining a particular form of activism that is concerned with advancing educational opportunities and outcomes for people who are acutely marginalized and disadvantaged: people from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds. Against a hostile international policy landscape with regard to seeking asylum, we will examine the different forms of activism that we—the co-investigators—engage with in the local, institutional, regional, national and international contexts within which we operate. We also seek to explore what sustains these educational activists, particularly in the context of what Choudry (2019) describes as the ‘star system’ of academia: a self-interested and ego-driven space, which promotes individualism and delimits the possibilities of collaboration according to research funding criteria. In this study, we will engage in a participatory, quasi auto-ethnographic inquiry that will explore the motivations, strategies, feelings and practices that an international group of educational activists engage in. The significance of this project is therefore to examine activists’ experience so as to develop a richer understanding of how educational activism happens in contemporary neoliberal academia, and against a political logic that is increasingly resistant to democratic participation.

Current Projects

An Investigation into the preparation of Pre-service Teachers for teaching in low SES contexts.

Jacqueline D’warte and Loshini Naidoo

In this study we are investigating how Western Sydney University, School of Education prepares Pre-Service Teachers for teaching in low SES contexts. We are examining the experiences of pre-service teachers during their Professional Experience teaching in low SES schools and exploring School Executives’ perceptions of quality teaching for low SES schools. We seek to understand the successes and challenges of working in SES contexts. This qualitative case study comprises semi-structured focus group and individual interviews 60mins duration with academic staff, pre-service teachers and school executives. This case study will triangulate different sources of evidence which come from interviews; as well as from different perspectives of those interviewees, thereby resulting in in-depth depiction (Yin, 2014, p. 48). Data analysis is currently in progress.

Youth in the Time of Coronavirus

Susanne Gannon, Jacqueline D’warte, Rachael Jacobs and Loshini Naidoo

This program of research involves an ongoing examination of the feelings, thoughts and experiences of young people aged 15-19 through periods of online learning in Australian schools during 2020, and 2021. The move to online learning challenged educators, families and students in a myriad of ways and privileging the voices and perspectives of young people seemed particularly important. As researchers concerned about educational justice and inclusion, we were inspired and guided by research led by Professor Dorte Marie Sondergaard Aarhus University Denmark. As our Danish colleagues noted, beyond conventional learning outcomes, the sociality and relationality of schooling are central to young people’s lives and their sense of belonging and becoming (Hansen, Knage, Rasmussen and Søndergaard, 2020). In this challenging time we were interested in considering how young people experience the shutting down of these domains of social life? What other modes of sociality have opened for them? What were their perspectives on online learning, on themselves as learners? Current Australian data comprises anonymous online surveys responses (or ‘written interview’) of open-ended questions from 2020 and 2021. 2020 interviews by Zoom with 8 individual students aged 14-15 and a collection of creative and reflective artefacts (31 writing, tasks) produced by young people under the guidance of their teachers within curriculum contexts. Analysis of this data and the collection of a further round of 2021 data is ongoing. We are currently undertaking a program of comparative analysis of all current data with our Danish colleagues and planning to co-author a series of publications. Current outputs from existing 2020 data include 2 manuscripts: ‘But w’rry not we shall banquet again someday: Creativity and socially distanced, English in Australia and Sociality, resilience and agency: How did young Australians experience online learning during Covid-19? Currently under review

Recent Publications

Books authored:

• Naidoo, L., Wilkinson J., Adoniou, M. & Langat K. (2018) Refugee Background Students Transitioning into Higher Education: Navigating complex spaces. Australia: Springer

Book chapters:

• Wagner, S. and Naidoo, L. (2023). Engaging parents of refugee backgrounds in their children’s education : insights from Australia, Perspectives on Transitions in Refugee Education: Ruptures, Passages, and Re-Orientations, Barbara Budrich Publishers 9783847426264.

• Naidoo, L. (2020). Refugee action support: Deliberate pedagogy in the school community in Stimulating Languages and Learning: Global perspectives and community engagement, O’Neill, S; Austin & Tonkin, (pp. 80-102).

• Naidoo, L. (2019). Refugee background students and teacher education. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Teacher Education (pp. 1-5). https://doi-org.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_193-1

• Naidoo, L., Wilkinson, J., Adoniou, M., & Langat K, (2018). School to university transitions for Australian children of refugee background: a complex journey in Transitions to Post-school Life: Responsiveness to Individual, Social and Economic Needs, Pavlova, Margarita, Lee, John Chikin, Maclean, Rupert, Singapore, 81-103.

• Naidoo, L. & Brace, E. (2017). The refugee action support program in Sydney, Australia: a bridge between cultures in Regional Perspectives on Learning by Doing: Stories from Engaged Universities Around the World, Hoyt, Lorlene, U.S., 81-102.

• Gannon, S. & Naidoo, L., & Gray T. (2016). Educational aspirations, ethnicity and mobility in western Sydney high schools in Super Dimensions in Globalisation and Education, Cole, David R., Woodrow, Christine, Singapore, 225-240

• Naidoo, L. (2014). Bending but not breaking in Contemporary Issues of Equity in Education, Gannon, Susanne, Sawyer, Wayne, U.K., 100-114

• Naidoo, L. (2014). Bending but not breaking: Aspirations, Hopes and Resilience in Contemporary Issues of Equity in Education, Gannon & Sawyer, Cambridge University Press, UK, pp 100-114

Journals:

• Naidoo, L. (2020). Traversing the terrain of higher education: experiences of refugee youth on the inside. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 25(2), 182-195. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/10.1080/13603116.2019.1707302

• Naidoo, L & Wagner, S. (2020). Thriving, not just surviving: the impact of teacher mentors on pre-service teachers in disadvantaged school contexts. Teaching and Teacher Education, 96. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103185

• Naidoo, L., & Adoniou, M, (2019). “I speak 19 languages”: accessing the linguistic and cultural resources of students from refugee backgrounds, The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL, 8(1), 111-130

• Gannon, S. & Naidoo, L. (2019). Thinking-feeling-imagining futures through creative arts-based participatory research, The Australian Educational Researcher.

• Mupenzi, A., Naidoo, L. & Gannon, S. (2019). ‘From Kyangwali to Sydney’ life history narrative and postcolonial theory in refugee educational studies, Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 21(2), 44-66

• Sidhu, R. & Naidoo, L. (2018) Educating Students from Refugee Backgrounds: Ethical Conduct to Resist the Politics of Besiegement. International Studies in Sociology of Education

• Naidoo, L. & D’Warte, J. (2017). The Western Sydney rustbelt: recognizing and building on strengths in pre-service teacher education, Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4), 69-83

• Naidoo, L. (2017). School to university pathways: enhancing access and participation in higher education for refugee background students, Access4All International Conference, 127-131

• Naidoo, L. (2015). Educating refugee-background students in Australian schools and universities, Intercultural Education, 26(3), 210-217

• Naidoo, L. (2015). Imagination and aspiration: flames of possibility for migrant background high school students and their parents, Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 40(3), 101-115

• Naidoo, L. (2015). Refugee transition: school-university partnerships that support refugee students’ participation in tertiary education, Journal of the World Universities Forum, 8(1), 15-22

OTHER PUBLICATION OUTPUTS

Reports

Woodrow, C., Somerville, M., Naidoo, L. & Power, K. (2016) Researching Parent Engagement: A qualitative field study. ARACY

• Naidoo, L., Wilkinson, J., Langat, K., Adoniou, M., Cunneen, R. & Bolger D, (2015). Case Study Report: Supporting School-University Pathways for Refugee Students’ Access and Participation in Tertiary Education, Australian Government Office of Learning and Teaching

Curriculum Resources and Materials

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1X90JlbBMErR8QrkDJ2KVYyiGl51ABpDG