The diversity and the experiences amongst students from refugee, migrant and newcomer backgrounds are varied.  Some students have enjoyed a relatively stable education in their home countries, while others have had none or hardly any.  Some students know a second language that they can share with teachers, while others don’t.  Some have a rich knowledge of their native language and vocabulary, while others don’t.  For some, the journey to the host country was especially traumatic, while for others, it was the deprivation and insecurity in their home countries that was unbearable.  For some students, the arrival in their host was distressing, while others have experienced little or none.   

   

Diverse students create the need for diverse trajectories of development.  It doesn’t make sense to walk the exact same path with every and all students.  When educators insist on the same path, then, they ensure that a migrant student’s unequal start is not only confirmed, but also reinforced.  Still, it is very wise to map both the growth and development of every student.

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In education, we often think in terms of competences.  Goals are often formulated abstractly and without connecting them to specific contexts.  In strength-based learning, growth and the use of a student’s knowledge and skills are linked to each context.  In an educational context, we want to give young people the space to experiment with other contexts outside of the school and classroom.  That’s why in strength-based learning, we emphasize ‘self-management’:  a young person can employ, in a self-directed way, diverse skills in his or her own self-chosen contexts.  Diverse behaviour – or being able to react and behave differently in various contexts – is a goal. 

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Because diverse behaviour is a goal, we assume that a school includes free working time into their curriculum.  

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In the Growth Document, student progress is mapped in a visible way.  As such, the Growth Document is a handbook for the young person and his or her teacher (see chart).  It works optimally when it is not seen as an instrument to ‘judge’ a student, but as the starting point of communication between the teacher, who is seen as the specialist of learning, and the student, who is seen as a specialist of his or her own learning and the world.  Now we will go through the structure of the Growth Document.