Abstract
The Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY) is a home-based program that supports the learning and development of children and families. This project was part of a larger study that examined the parental involvement of Ezidi refugees in the HIPPY program to improve outcomes for the families and their children in a regional area of Australia and was informed by Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory. The families received home visits as part of the HIPPY program to implement activities with the parent and the child. It was observed that some families had low involvement with the program due to their limited English proficiency. The researchers developed online cultural resources in the Ezidi oral language and English in consultation with parents and with the assistance of the University Media Team. This paper reports on those cultural resources designed to engage families in their children’s transition to school and to give children the opportunity to maintain their home language. The findings indicated that the resources supported familyºchild collaboration, extended children’s educational experiences, and helped preserve native language.
This paper originated from a study aimed to support refugee families in their children’s transition to full-time school in regional Australia (Ba Akhlagh et al., 2024). Several Ezidi families were participating in the Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY) and received home visits by a family support worker and a community translator to implement activities with both the parent and the child. Some parents indicated they were not benefitting from the HIPPY program given that they have a native oral language and little knowledge of English as a second language. The parents indicated that they would appreciate the provision of cultural resources in their native language. The researchers designed cultural, literacy, and mathematics resources that were developmentally appropriate for the children while concurrently allowing for the engagement of the parents. The researchers developed the cultural resources based on consultation with the Ezidi families in the HIPPY community gatherings and cultural events. With the assistance of the University Media Team, a website of diverse activities was developed and made available online for public use. This paper introduces the resources, the challenges developing them, and their significance to the parents, children, and educators.
Empirical Background
With an increase in wars and conflicts worldwide, thousands of young refugees enter Australia each year on humanitarian visas. Australia granted about 18,000 Refugee and Humanitarian visas in 2023 (Refugee Council of Australia, 2024). Early childhood services and schools are often the first point of contact for many children and families (Uptin et al., 2013). Watkins et al. (2019) report from the NSW Department of Education that one in 100 students in NSW schools is a refugee. Refugee families face a wide range of challenges and obstacles including dislocation, disrupted education, discrimination or social exclusion and may also have previously experienced trauma affecting their overall well-being (Due et al., n.d.). Children who come from a language background other than English, including children from refugee backgrounds, experience higher development vulnerability in communication skills and general knowledge than children who only speak English (Commonwealth of Australia, 2023). Bilingual children benefit from translanguaging, a practice that assists the learning of other languages during play-based interactions where teachers and educators make connections between two languages during playful experiences (Zheng et al., 2024). Transitioning to school is a major change for children and parents as they navigate the differences between prior-to-school settings and the formal school setting which requires a joint effort between families, schools, and communities (Kaplan et al., 2022). Using translanguaging practices enables children to draw flexibly on multiple linguistic resources.
Despite the increase of refugees in Australia, there has been limited research on the approach to transition to school and the special support required (Kaplan et al., 2022; Watkins et al., 2019). In Petriwskyj’s (2013) study, transition was considered effective when using a strength-based approach where family participation and choice were respected, ultimately supporting the family. Understanding the lived experiences, voices, and perspectives of refugee children and families is essential to alleviating a deficit view of what they lack rather than identifying the strengths of what they bring to the curriculum, to further sustain these strengths (Cho et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019). Identifying an individual’s strengths links to the Funds of Knowledge theory of Moll et al. (1992) by drawing on the assets and resources historically and culturally accumulated from life experience.
The HIPPY program is available in many countries to assist the integration of children and families. The Brotherhood of St Laurence is a social justice organisation that administers the federally funded HIPPY program throughout Australia in 100 at-risk communities (HIPPY Australia, 2025). Refugees are among those vulnerable groups supported by HIPPY. This study was undertaken in a regional community in NSW Australia and the HIPPY program was implemented by a family support organisation. The program assisted many families, including some Ezidi families living in a refugee settlement location. Thousands of Ezidis, a religious minority from Western Asia, were resettled in Australia as part of the Humanitarian Settlement Program in 2017 and 2018 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022). The study objectives were to investigate the changes in the families’ capacity to assist their children’s learning as they transition to the school system, and to capture the families’ perceptions of progress in the children’s learning and well-being due to participating in the program. However, to further assist families, a range of digital resources were created to support parental involvement.
Digital play is widely used in teaching and education. Edwards and Bird (2017) advocate digital play as a cultural tool strongly linked to Vygotsky’s notion of tool mediation as children acquire new skills, through exploration, problem-solving, innovation, and symbolic play. Kaplan et al. (2022) suggested that a positive transition to school requires understanding of the language and culture of the family to ensure a balanced and inclusive approach when choosing the educational activities and resources. A study by Rogers (2018) found that mothers contributed to their children’s education at home by participating in homework, games, and introductory activities which they found helped them to learn the language and to communicate more effectively with their children. Although Rogers (2018) also noted that the mothers lacked the knowledge and support required to fully participate in the educational activities. Research using multilevel latent growth modelling by Ahtola et al. (2011) demonstrated that supportive activities provided for a group of refugee children in the years before school increased the children’s skills and academic performance developed in grade 1.
Theoretical Background
The research was informed by Cultural Historical Theory (Vygotsky, 1987) to support Ezidi families’ engagement in the HIPPY program by designing culturally constructed and endorsed resources. These resources were digital tools and used as mediators to learn higher mental functions which occur in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Development is a continuous process of acquiring higher mental functions “held by culture and passed on to the child during interaction with the adult” (Veraksa & Veraksa, 2018, p. 150). With the cooperation of an adult through guided participation and socially situated activity, transformation takes place for higher mental functions. The use of digital tools such as visual models, schemes, and symbols was designed to assist in language and cognitive development of children in the program. Additionally, the emphasis included the role of culture, history, and social interaction in learning and development. By engaging with Ezidi families in regional Australia, we explored their cultural knowledge, traditions, and lived experiences to co-design resources that reflect their identities. Furthermore, the resources encouraged the parents’ engagement in children’s play and the use of English as well as their home language, successfully building their identity in a new community to strengthen their sense of belonging, being, and becoming (Veresov, 2020).
Development of the Resources
The design phase of the resources involved the following:
Collaboration with the regional family support service; for example, researchers actively attended the community gatherings which were often held once per month as part of the HIPPY program to build trust with the families and children. Children’s ages ranged between two and nine years old. At the beginning of the gatherings, families participating in the local HIPPY program received information sheets about the research and consent forms and were invited to participate in the evaluation of the program. Community translators assisted the researchers since some parents had limited understanding of English. During the gatherings, one researcher presented information to families related to child development while the other researcher engaged in play activities with Ezidi children. The researchers inquired about resources during the gatherings.
Active engagement with the community and volunteering in different programs such as “Family hour” art activities in the art gallery, “Ladies’ swimming night”, Ezidi New Year celebration, and the anniversary of the Shingal Genocide against the Ezidi. The researchers inquired about cultural resources at all events.
Collaboration with the local University Education Media Team to design online resources.
Content of the Resources
The cultural resources were developed using a website with text written in English, recordings of text in Kurmanji (the native oral language of the Ezidi), a printout of the activities, and links to resources for parents. A downloadable PDF file of the activities could be used offline to extend the learning experience. The link to the website is: https://content.une.edu.au/2023/ec_hippy/welcome.html
Information about the activities is in Table 1.
Items and descriptions of the resources.
The design adhered to guidelines for digitally and culturally relevant content (Early Childhood Australia [ECA], 2018). Engaging required clicking, dragging items, making connections, and returning to the main page. The text was written in English with a voiceover in Kurmanji. The user, adult or child, is exposed to both the oral Kurmanji and the printed English translation simultaneously once they hover the mouse over the text. The rationale for the resources focused on a range of age-appropriate learning including maths and numeracy involving understanding numbers through iconic and symbolic representation, counting, estimating, and noticing patterns. The stories, songs, and recipes promoted symbolic functioning, identity formation, and memory using dual languages.
Engagement with the website enabled collaboration with adults or peers creating a foundation for developmental learning based on Vygotsky’s ZPD (Veraksa & Veraksa, 2018) and promoting cultural diversity (ECA, 2018). To achieve successful communication, the graphic designer embedded cultural graphics and images to appeal to families, especially in the story segment. The digital tools mediated by families and support workers assisted in the development of higher mental functions (Veraksa & Veraksa, 2018) towards improved language acquisition, mathematics knowledge, and skills as well as supporting identity formation and continuity of Ezidi culture and traditions.
Methodological Challenges
Researchers faced several challenges in designing resources for the Ezidi community, as follows:
Collecting Resources From the Ezidi Community
Building trust with families who had experienced trauma was most challenging. To foster trust, researchers engaged in events outlined in the design phase. However, even after establishing trust, families seem to have forgotten their childhood play experiences and shared stories that were not always suitable for children in Australia. They told stories of persecution in their home country prior to emigrating to Australia. For example, one mother recounted her experience of being captured by ISIS. Additionally, when researchers requested traditional food recipes, they received multiple versions of the same dish. This discrepancy reflects the richness and variability inherent in all cultural expressions including food.
Designing the Resources
The researchers collaborated with the university’s social media team members who were designing cultural resources for Ezidi and had limited knowledge of the language and culture. Creating culturally appropriate characters and themes required multiple revisions to ensure accurate representation and sensitivity to the community.
Finalising the Resources
Recording voiceovers for various activities required community participation. Researchers reached out to several community members and ultimately identified individuals who were enthusiastic about contributing their voices to the project.
Implementation of the Resources
The resources were introduced in the community gatherings where family support workers sought specific feedback from the study participants in their home language. However, the responses are largely anecdotal and based on self-reports, a limitation of the study. They noted the parents’ and children’s feedback and inquired later about the ongoing use. All families indicated that the format was friendly and easy to use, and the children engaged with the prompts embedded in the activities, song, and story. The families also reported that the resources helped them share their cultural heritage and language with their children. The children were pleasantly surprised to hear their own language in a formal setting outside home and reported enjoying the national song, the storylines, and engagement with the activities. Some children forgot the days and numbers in Kurmanji, and the activities acted as a reminder. One mother used the story as a bedtime routine. More systematic observational data or excerpts of dialogue are unavailable.
Discussion
A review of the literature on digital play indicated that digital resources provide learning and development, enjoyment, and participatory opportunities among other features (Chu et al., 2024). Digital play is also referred to as a cultural tool by Edwards and Bird (2017). The resources included cultural relevance for families, enabling them to pass on their cultural heritage. Through mediated actions and the use of cultural tools, the child develops identity (Veresov, 2020) engaging with the numbers, story, song, games, and recipe ingredients, thus culminating in preserving a cultural heritage dated thousands of years. Using visual and graphic tools through mediation during play, generalization and cognitive skills are targeted (Veraksa & Veraksa, 2018), developing literacy and numeracy skills to successfully transition to school. Due to the lack of systematic observational data, the findings are viewed as illustrative cases rather than as firm evidence of developmental impact.
Parent–Child Engagement
Mallawaarachchi and Cliff (2024) reviewed 100 studies on the benefits of screen-use contexts and recommended co-use with a caregiver in an intentional context that promotes translation of the online content to real-life experiences, emphasising the relevance of cultural mediation in the process towards higher mental development (Veresov, 2020). Vygotsky (1987) emphasises the role of cultural development happening firstly on a social level (interpsychologically) and then on a personal level (intrapsychologically) within the child. The website was designed to include these benefits so the adult and the child could share the experience together in a playful environment. The resources could generate discussions among the family members and subsequent physical implementation, such as playing the feet game and trying the recipe at home away from the digital device. The recipes, games, story, and song could be the beginning of a collection project for families to expand the repertoire of shared activities in their home language. Families and peers could also brainstorm together new variations of the activities and situate the learning in the real context.
The promotion of the Ezidi language has strong socio-cultural and historical implications since the parents play a crucial role in maintaining the home language (Vygotsky, 1987). The research indicates that maintaining the home language not only helps children to build their identity (Caldas, 2006; Shen & Jiang, 2021) but also helps in their academic success (Yurtsever et al., 2023). The literacy and numeracy skills in one language could transfer within the context of a second language. Unfortunately, by the time children begin attending early learning settings or school, they rapidly acquire the dominant language and often prefer to communicate in it, even with their parents (De Houwer, 2007).
Implications and Extension to Early Learning Contexts
The developed resources are accessible to families and children who participated in the HIPPY program and to other families as well. Hence, Ezidi children could act as agents in early learning settings or schools and with the help of parents could share the resources with their educators. Educators benefit by introducing the activities and asking children to say the text in their native language, thus facilitating a multilingual and multicultural context in accordance with the Early Years Learning Framework (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022). Children hear their own language, thus extending their sense of belonging to the classroom. Other children could try the activities by following the instructions in English. Educators could also monitor the children’s interest and extend the content by asking other children to share resources. For example, children could share their preferred food, story, or song.
Conclusion
The online cultural resources aimed at preserving the families’ cultural heritage in the children’s ongoing educational journey in literacy and numeracy in their transition to school. A strength-based approach was adopted based on life experiences historically and culturally amassed. Identities are socially constructed, and the resources highlight the unique cultural identity of the Ezidi people.
At the risk of losing their identity, language, and customs, the resources assisted in the co-construction of identity, shifting and changing through ongoing interactions with others. The families appreciated the activities and found them easy to navigate. The presence of English translation facilitates sharing cultural heritage with the broader community. However, families may face challenges in sustaining their use. Issues such as uneven access to technology, parents’ varying literacy levels, or the emotional labour of preserving cultural practices in the context of displacement could be acknowledged as real-world considerations that affect implementation.