Türkiye
Teacher’s beliefs and flexible language strategies in a monolingual preschool classroom
This study aims to examine teacher’s beliefs about Syrian children’s Turkish language learning and teacher’s language strategies in a monolingual preschool classroom located in a multilingual city, Siirt Turkey. This ethnographic study was conducted between October 2019 and January 2020 in a multilingual city. The data included fieldnotes kept during participant observations of children’s interactions and interviews with the teacher.…
2022
A multicultural education approach to Turkish picture books written for Syrian refugee children
Syrian refugees worldwide experience many difficulties, including integrating into the host country. Turkey host most of the Syrian refugees, but limited studies examined Syrian refugees’ transnational experiences in children’s literature. In this study, I have examined the picture books written for Syrian refugee children published in Turkey through a multicultural education framework to highlight how microculture and macroculture relate to…
2022
Higher Education for forcibly displaced migrants in Turkey
Higher education (HE) provides a unique opportunity to accomplish social and economic integration and mitigate the impact of displacement for forcibly displaced migrants (FDMs) in the long run. Against this backdrop, the purpose of the study is to explore the HE experiences of Syrian FDMs in Turkey. Utilizing snowball sampling, 24 FDMs in Turkey were interviewed. The results suggested that…
2022
Political socialization experiences of Turkish citizen university students of Syrian origin
Sometime after the anti-regime demonstrations began in Syria in March 2011, there was a huge wave of migration to neighboring countries, including Turkey. Some of these fled youth who were forced to emigrate from Syria came to Turkey and later became university students and acquired Turkish citizenship. This qualitative study focuses on the process of political socialization and political resocialization…
2022
Summer Preschools for Syrian Refugee and Host Community Children in Turkey: A Model of Contextually Sensitive Early Intervention
Research Findings: This study evaluated the impacts of the Summer Preschools Program on 5-to-6-year-old Syrian refugee and local children from vulnerable communities of Turkey. Developed as a community-based contextually sensitive early intervention model, the program aimed to promote developmental well-being and school readiness of children from forced displacement and abject poverty backgrounds by supporting cognitive, language, and socioemotional development prior…
2022
Challenges of migrant students in Turkish higher education
Migrant students, including refugees and international students who begin or continue their education in Turkey, encounter several challenges. This study aimed to identify the challenges that migrant students face in the Turkish higher education system. The sample of the study consisted of 75 migrant students from six universities in Turkey in the 2019–2020 academic year. Demographic information of the students…
2022
A Corpus-Based Comparison of Inclusiveness in L2 Reading Materials for Refugee Children
Despite increased emphasis on the role of inclusive practices and materials in post-COVID-19 classrooms and warnings about implicit biases against disadvantaged groups, the textbook problem has rarely been approached with equity measures in mind. This multimethod study aimed to investigate to what extent L2 reading materials, locally produced and used for refugee education in Turkey and New Zealand, include all…
2022
Teacher agency for social justice in telecollaboration: locating agentive positioning in virtual language interaction
In this study, we draw data from a tripartite telecollaborative project that involved 112 teacher candidates (TCs) from university-based teacher education programmes in France, Turkey, and the USA. Theoretically, we rely on Pantić’s (2015. A model for study of teacher agency for social justice. Teachers and Teaching 21, no. 6: 759–778) model of teacher agency for social justice and use…
2022
Understanding Syrian parents’ educational involvement in their children's primary education in Turkey
Parental involvement in education is significant for children's schooling experience and their cognitive and academic development. It also plays a role in refugee children's success and integration in the host country. However, understanding refugee parents’ educational involvement can be a complex issue because of their different cultural beliefs and unique challenges as refugees. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with Syrian…
2022
The Life of Syrian Asylum-Seeking Children in a Temporary Shelter Centre in Turkey: An Ethnographic Study on Primary School Education
This research aims to describe primary school children’s life and education experiences who escaped from the war environment in Syria and took refuge in Turkey. The study was conducted with an ethnographic research design. The study participants comprised fourth-grade students, teachers, parents, and the close social circle of Syrian nationals who stayed in the temporary shelter in Turkey. Observation, interview,…
2022
Educational Assimilation of First-Generation and Second-Generation Immigrants in Germany
Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984–2018, we analyze the intergenerational education mobility of immigrants in Germany by identifying the determinants of differences in educational stocks for first- and second-generation immigrants in comparison to individuals without a migration background. Our results show that on average, first-generation immigrants have fewer years of schooling than native-born Germans and have a…
2022
HIGHER EDUCATION POLICIES FOR SYRIAN REFUGEES IN TURKEY: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR SYRIAN AND TURKISH STUDENTS
Turkey has been hosting the largest Syrian refugee migration in the world since 2011, which has necessitated a continuous change in state-level measures to cater for the deficiencies of a forced displacement ranging from economic to social and educational instruments. Despite constructive national policies and legislation of the Turkish government and financial support, refugee access and enrollment in higher education…
2022
School Adaptation of Students Under Temporary Protection (From the Eyes of Turkish and Syrian Students) [Geçici Koruma Altında Bulunan Öğrencilerin Okula Uyumları (Türk ve Suriyeli Öğrencilerin Gözünden)*]
This study aims to examine the school adjustment of Syrian children who were obliged to leave their country for different reasons and who are under temporary protection in Turkey according to the opinions of Turkish and Syrian students. The study, which was carried out in accordance with qualitative research methods, has participants consisting of 10 Turkish and 10 Syrian students…
2022
Grappling with the transformative potential of translanguaging pedagogy in an elementary school with Syrian refugees in post-coup Turkey
Translanguaging pedagogies have been documented to support language minoritized students in various ways, such as supporting their academic learning, affirming their bi-/multilingual and cultural identities, and disrupting the colonial and monolingual ideologies dominating school curricula. Yet, very few scholars have pointed to the existing barriers in schools and societies hindering educators from fully achieving the transformative potential of translanguaging pedagogy.…
2022
Inclusion teacher qualifications as a basis for refugee education: A framework review according to views of turkish teachers
The present study aimed to discuss the teacher qualifications necessary to create inclusive education environments towards Syrian students who are under the status of temporary protection and educated in Turkey on the basis of the experiences and views of teachers. In the study, the phenomenological design was preferred as it was attempted to address the concept of inclusiveness specific to…
2022
Turkish education policies and practices: inclusive or exclusionary?
This research aims to determine the opinions of teachers and educational administrators about how inclusive the Turkish education system is and attempts to provide a profound picture of inclusive education policies and practices in Turkey. In this qualitative-phenomenological study, sampling technique was used. Thirteen general education teachers and seven administrators, who participated in inclusive education in-service teacher training activities, constituted…
2022
“I Fight, I Don’t Give up Hope”: Resilience and Life Satisfaction among Syrian Refugee University Students in Turkey
Forced migration is a phenomenon that profoundly affects the levels of resilience and life satisfaction of refugees. Hence, the purpose of current study is to address how Syrian refugee university students who study in Turkey recovered after deformation caused by significant changes in their life. This study employed a convergent mixed method design. The quantitative results indicated that there were…
2022
The relationships among psychological resilience, intercultural sensitivity and empathetic tendency among teachers of Syrian refugee children in Turkey
Within the provision of education, teachers typically have the closest contact and play a key role in meeting the needs of refugee children through effective communication to achieve culturally qualified education and the provision of more humanistic approach. This descriptive cross-sectional design study is aimed to explore the relationships among psychological resilience, intercultural sensitivity and empathetic tendency in teachers of…
2022
Uncovering Community Cultural Wealth Through an Early Intervention Program: Syrian Refugee Children Speaking
The voices of young refugee children are often unheard and unacknowledged in early childhood research. Deficit views that perpetuate their vulnerability and victimization pervade research and media. Such omnipresent views need to be challenged by foregrounding and capitalizing on the strengths, agency, and resilience of refugee children. Grounded in the Community Cultural Wealth framework, this study aimed to explore the aspects of…
2022
The Playground Perception of Syrian Refugee Children
Drawings by children are key to understanding their experiences in various aspects such as perceptions of playgrounds and the events that happen in them. This study aims to reveal Syrian refugee children's perceptions of playgrounds. In the study, drawings of children who live in two different cities in Turkey were collated. The results showed that children draw slides, swings, and…
2022
Belonging through Higher Education: The Case of Syrian Youth in Turkey
This article uses a refugee centred approach to explore experiences of belonging through higher education. It is based on fieldwork conducted during the fall of 2019 in Gaziantep, Turkey. This article aims to understand the factors that form refugees' sense of belonging and the degree to which the contextualized experiences of refugee youths influence their sense of belonging in the…
2022
Home-Based Early Education for Refugee and Local Children via Mothers: A Model of Contextually Sensitive Early Intervention
Contextually sensitive home-visiting programs can foster positive parenting and enhance child development and learning especially among vulnerable families exposed to armed conflict, forced displacement, and poverty. Developed based on ecological model and family resilience theories, the Home-Based Early Childhood Education (HECE) program provided an 11-week home-visiting intervention to Syrian refugee and local Turkish mothers in impoverished host communities of Turkey.…
2022
Teacher candidates’ ideological tensions and covert metaphors about Syrian refugees in Turkey: Critical discourse analysis of telecollaboration
This study draws data from an asynchronous discussion to which teacher candidates (TCs) from France, Turkey, and USA contributed as part of their participation in a semester-long telecollaboration in 2017. The analysis focused on the contributions of TCs (n=34) from Turkey and explored how they represented Syrian refugees in their responses to a question about refugees and immigration in their…
2022
The integration of asylum seekers and refugees in the field of education and the labour market: Comparative thematic report
This report is based on a meta-analysis of nine national reports on integration from countries along the so-called Eastern Mediterranean Route. It includes two countries beyond the EU, Turkey and Iraq, which have played an important role as source and transit countries of refugees, the transit countries of Greece, Italy and Poland, and the destination countries of Austria, Germany, Sweden,…
2021
Conditions of Syrian asylum seeker students in a Turkish university
In this study, the conditions of the Syrian asylum seeker students in Turkish universities were addressed and discussed. This study was conducted by adopting a phenomenological approach from qualitative research methods. In this regard, interviews were held with fifteen Syrian asylum seeker students continuing their education in various departments of Kahramanmaras Sutcu Imam University, a state university in Turkey. A…
2021
Becoming the teacher of a refugee child: Teachers’ evolving experiences in Turkey
Anti-immigrant discourses are sweeping across the globe while forced displacement brings educational, political, economic, and social challenges in many countries. Turkey’s latest initiative is the inclusion of almost one million school-aged Syrian children into the public education system. In this research, we aim to understand the evolving experiences of teachers of Syrian refugee students in relation to inclusive education in…
2021
Navigating university spaces as refugees: Syrian students’ pathways of access to and through higher education in Turkey
This paper aims to explore how refugee students construct pathways of access to higher education by drawing on interviews with 15 Syrian university students studying at different universities across Turkey. The research is located within a capabilities-based human development paradigm from which it outlines the factors that enable students’ transition into university and looks at how they navigate complex higher…
2021
Syrian Refugees in Turkey: (Un)Equal Opportunities in Education
The number of Syrian refugees seeking shelter in Turkey continues to rise as Syria enters its tenth year of violence. The ongoing crisis has resulted in more than 3.5 million registered Syrian refugees (UNHCR 2019). Although multiple social, economic, and security related debates have been studied by researchers in this field, the scope of this chapter focuses on the education…
2021
Three Contexts As The Post-Migration Ecology For Refugees: School Principals’ Challenges And Strategies In Turkey, Lebanon, And Germany
This article seeks to compare and analyze school-level challenges for school leaders and their responses to Syrian refugee education in Turkey, Lebanon, and Germany, drawing on the post-migration ecology framework developed and sensemaking processes in leadership. We utilized a comparative qualitative design within the realm of qualitative research. Findings revealed that the challenges are similar across the three contexts and…
2021
Stigmatisation and othering: the case of Syrian students in Turkish schools
In the last four years, with the implementation of the policy of integration of the Syrian refugee students into the public schools in Turkey, there has been a significant rise in the number of Syrian students in mainstream classrooms. Based on the analysis of the discourses of Turkish teachers and students about Syrian students, this study examines the ways in…
2021
Teachers’ attitudes to syrian refugee students in Turkey
From the last decade on, the matter of refugees in Turkey has become a key issue in almost all social and political areas including education. Following the refugee influx from 2011 on, Turkey has immediately taken action to provide the Syrian refugee students with necessary educational opportunities in its mainstream schools. The present study was targeted at revealing Turkish teachers’…
2021
Multicultural competencies of social studies teachers: A qualitative study
Purpose: Turkey is a country hosting many people of diverse religious beliefs (e.g., Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) and a great variety of ethnic origins (e.g., Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Slavs, Arabs, Romanians and Kurds). It is also subject to continuous migratory flows from neighboring countries and beyond. Due to these factors, it has become increasingly evident that a more multicultural educational…
2021
An exploration of teachers’ perceptions of Syrian students in Turkey and implications for school social work
Low rates of school enrolment emerge as a significant problem among Syrian students in Turkey; however, enrolment in the school brings about new challenges not only for the Syrian refugee students but also for Turkish students and their teachers. In order to address this issue, this study aims to depict the perceived problems experienced by Syrian and Turkish students and…
2021
Refugee education in Turkey: barriers and suggested solutions
Education is among the areas most affected by immigration. Addressing refugee children’s schooling is an important contribution to the refugee crises, which span the world with far-reaching socio-economic effect. This study unpacks the challenges that refugee children, mainly from Syria, face in integrating into primary and secondary public schools in Turkey. It also proposes some tentative resolutions, drawing from the experiences…
2021
Relationship between school performance and breakfast quality in refugee children: Case study of mardin region
Background: Many studies have found that the academic success of school-age children is proved to be in close relation with regular and healthy nutrition. Objectives: This study aims to investigate the relationship between breakfast quality and academic success of refugee primary-school children. Methods: After scanning 24 schools in the city center, 384 students who were refugee Syrians from primary schools…
2021
Hopes of Syrian refugee students about the future
Investigating the hopes of Syrian students about the future is important in terms of their future expectations, life goals and their level of commitment to Turkey as a host society. Therefore, the present study, using a qualitative case study method, aims to study Syrian refugee high school students’ hopes about the future. The study points to a complex phenomenon.
2021
‘Am I a terrorist or an educator?’ Turkish asylum seekers narratives on education rights violations after a crackdown following the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey
Democratisation in Turkey collapsed in the wake of the 2016 failed military coup and the crackdown that followed, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan launching a widespread rollback of academic and other liberties, systematically purging civic institutions of political opponents and critics that significantly harmed intellectuals, students, and educational rights. This paper analyses the narratives of Turkish citizens who were prosecuted,…
2021
Refugees in the Educational System: Views of Turk and Refugee Students
One of the most important topics in the field of education is refugee education as a result of the rapid increase in refugee numbers in recent periods in Turkey. The aim of this research is to investigate opinions of refugees and Turkish students about education given to refugees in Turkey. The basic assumption of the study is that the characteristics…
2021
Schooling contexts of refugees at primary schools in two hotspots: comparison of italy and turkey [İlkokullardaki̇ mülteci̇leri̇n eğİti̇msel bağlamlari: İtalya ve türki̇ye karşilaştirmasi]
This study aimed to investigate refugee pupils’ schooling contexts, their social relationships with teachers and native peers in math, social studies, and native language courses at primary schools. The research is a combination of two parts that originated from the observations in Italy to highlight the refugees’ schooling contexts in classrooms, then followed by the part that took place in…
2021
Education Policies and Schooling for Arabic-Speaking Refugee Children in Australia and Turkey
This paper aims to compare refugee settlement and education policies between two geographically and culturally distinct nations, Australia and Turkey. Due to its geographical position in the Middle East, Turkey now hosts millions of refugees especially following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Australia also has a long history of hosting and supporting refugees from many countries…
2021
Subtle Islamization of teacher education: A critical discourse analysis of Turkey's “inclusive” education initiative for refugee integration
Since Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002, various educational changes have been mandated in Turkey to raise a conservative, pious generation in line with its conservative-democratic identity. Yet, these changes have not come all at once, but implemented gradually, through a process of subtle Islamization. In this paper, drawing upon the Discourse Historical Approach in Critical…
2021
“If only they forgot that I was Syrian and an Arab, I am a human beings too.” Syrian university students' experiences of being a foreigner: A phenomenological study
Migration is voluntary or forced relocation of individuals from a familiar physical, social, and cultural environment to an unfamiliar one. While migration is a challenging experience, traumatic experiences that happened before and after migrating may have numerous adverse effects. The aim of this study was to evaluate Syrian nursing students’ experiences of being a foreigner before and after migration and…
2021
Culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogy in a diverse urban classroom: Challenges of pedagogy for Syrian refugee youths and teachers in Turkey
This study focused on whether and how teachers implemented the principles of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies and the challenges teachers faced while trying to implement these principles with Syrian students in Turkey. The study was built on the four components of pedagogies: academic achievement; cultural competencies; sociopolitical consciousness; and the sustainability of culture. Qualitative data were obtained through interviews…
2021
The relation between quality of life and future expectations for refugee adolescents
Problem: Refugee children and their families encounter various challenges in a new country. Studies on this issue reveal the presence of negative expectations on the future and life among refugees. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between quality of life and future expectations in refugee adolescents. Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted in Turkey. In this…
2021
The psycho-social needs of displaced Syrian youth in Turkish schools: A qualitative study
This study investigates major challenges encountered by Syrian refugee youth in public high schools in Turkey, focusing on three sources of assessment: the refugee students themselves and their parents and educators. Based on qualitative interpretive research methodology, twenty-three individual semi-structured interviews were conducted. The study simultaneously hears the voices of the Syrian refugee students as well as those of their…
2021
Building Social Cohesion in Ethnically Mixed Schools: An Intervention on Perspective Taking
We evaluate the effect of an educational program that aims to build social cohesion in ethnically mixed schools by developing perspective-taking ability in children. The program is implemented in Turkish elementary schools affected by a large influx of Syrian refugee children. We measure a comprehensive set of outcomes that characterize a cohesive school environment, including peer violence incidents, the prevalence…
2021
Does Studying with the Local Students Effect Psycological Symptoms in Refugee Adolescents? A Controlled Study
Integration of refugees into the education system at the resettlement country is a significant issue. In this study, we investigated how refugee students are affected in terms of psychological symptoms by studying in the same classroom with their local peers. This cross-sectional study was conducted during the school year in Mardin, Turkey. Participants consisted of 105 Syrian refugee adolescents and…
2021
Disadvantages and solutions of a model in asylum seeker education: Temporary education centers (TECs)
The violence, and instability because of civil war in Syria have caused millions of people to leave their country. Many countries have been affected from this migration. Turkey is one of the countries that has been significantly affected from this crisis. Turkey is trying to provide some services to Syrian people. Education is one of them. For education of this…
2021
An overview of refugee education in Europe
The overview of refugee children education in Europe we provide in this book is part of the Erasmus + project “ITIRE: Improving teaching to improve refugee children education”. Following the unprecedented flow of forced migrants to Europe in 2015, several countries have adopted measures to facilitate the enrolment of refugee children in the educational system. These actions have produced a…
2020
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Intervention
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Human rights
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Spain
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Integration Policies, Practices & Experiences: Turkey Country Report
This Integration in Turkey Country Report focuses on integration policies, practices and responses to refugee immigration between 2011 and 2019. The report is composed of two main parts. First, the report defines integration according to EU guidelines and specifically as “differential inclusion” (Cases-Cortes et al 2015, p. 79-80). It provides an overview of Turkey’s integration policy discourses, in particular the…
2020