Reframing the reintegration of trafficked children, centering the role of family and community

Ifeyinwa Mbakogu — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0500

Reintegration programs and policies informing them in West Africa are framed within Western notions of childhood and child development, which fail to account for relationships within family and community contexts that influence a child’s movement away from home. The paper is informed by ongoing research with trafficked children from West Africa, residing in shelters, or who have returned home to their identified family members or guardians. It draws on interview data and personal narratives that highlight both the diversity and complexity of children’s experiences across trafficking, rescue, and reintegration phases. The study found that on returning home, survivors are confronted with the trauma of their trafficking experiences, familial blame, silencing, shame, exclusion, and pressure to endure exploitation for the benefit of family honor and survival. The paper calls for reintegration practices for survivors of trafficking to be context-dependent processes that interrogate family and community interactions rather than assuming that they are supportive of survivors and their recovery. It emphasizes that reintegration efforts should be survivor-informed, culturally grounded, and designed to accommodate the unique needs of each child. The findings support family-and-community-inclusive interventions that transcend reunification to prioritize survivor narratives, address histories of power imbalances, stigma and coercion, and the nature of family obligations.

The teaching method of “siplaecec” in language learning: The conditional role subject to need climate within a self-determination theory framework

Qi Zhang — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0500

This study investigates, framed within Self-Determination Theory (SDT), how need climate (Need-supportive versus need-thwarting) and teaching method (“Siplaecec” featuring scaffolded interactive play, ludic autonomous engagement, and competence-embedded context versus “traditional method” through didactic instruction) interact to influence language learning outcomes. A two-way ANCOVA measures the interaction effect, controlling for pre-intervention performance, to examine the potential synergistic relationship between the need climate and teaching method. The results demonstrate that the need climate alone has a significant main effect on learning outcomes, with need-supportive environments outperforming need-thwarting conditions. In contrast, the teaching method alone reveals a non-significant main effect, indicating that innovative pedagogy does not necessarily facilitate learning in isolation. Notably, the results highlight a disordinal interaction effect. Explicitly speaking, learners in the group of “siplaecec” employed in need-supportive climates have achieved the highest outcomes, while those in the group of “siplaecec” employed in need-thwarting climates have achieved the lowest outcomes. Traditional methods have yielded relatively stable effects regardless of need climates. These findings suggest the conditional efficiency of pedagogical innovation, the potential persistence-stimulating role of need frustration, and the resilience of traditional methods in buffering against the debilitating influences of unsupportive environments. This study extends the principles of SDT and presents the climate-sensitive implementation of play-related pedagogies.

American Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities

Reframing the reintegration of trafficked children, centering the role of family and community

The teaching method of “siplaecec” in language learning: The conditional role subject to need climate within a self-determination theory framework