Facilitating Learning in Context: Refugee Resettlement Case Management Pedagogy in a Human Services Course

Abstract

This essay presents a case study of a class design for a course that prepares aspiring human service professionals to practice basic case management skills. The course employed a collaborative learning framework and a community engagement, project-based pedagogy that allowed students to engage in local agencies supporting refugee resettlement. Furthermore, students studied the processes of migration and asylum seeking and designed a project for the university’s campus community to raise awareness about migration and refugee resettlement. The project served to disrupt racist and xenophobic discourses about refugees and immigrants. Students’ final projects on the migration experiences of refugees highlighted here (from 2017 and 2018) became a multi-year campus event adopted and sponsored by a student club focused on global social justice. The essay concludes with guidelines to design successful collaborative learning, community engagement, project-based human services courses.