Abstract:

The refugee crisis is one of the most crucial global political and social issues of the world. Turkey hosts the highest number of child refugees in the world (United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF] 2017). Starting from 2011, the number of school-aged Syrian children rapidly increased to around one million, marking a sudden shift in child demographics in the country (UNHCR 2018). This fact brings the necessity and responsibility of creating an appropriate learning environment for all these school-aged refugee children. As classrooms become more diverse and include refugee children who have a wide range of life experiences may have an effect on their learning process. One enduring challenge is about how teachers handle diverse students with difficult experiences including war, loss, cultural and language barriers in their classrooms. In this context, we are studying teacher knowledge sharing rounds as a component of a 2-year exploratory project, Project MIGRA-MATH, which has been funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK, 215K478). "Project MIGRA-MATH: Supporting Teachers of Immigrant Students with Respect to Their Mathematics Education Professional Practices" focused on developing a support mechanism for young refugee children, their families, and teachers in four different cities in Turkey. In the teacher knowledge sharing round held in the second year of the project, we worked with 20 classroom teachers who have refugee students in their classrooms. The aim of this study is to arouse empathy on behalf of classroom teachers about traumatic and life challenging experiences of Syrian refugee students. Along with this purpose, eight real-life scenarios were presented to participants. They were asked to reflect on the feelings and thoughts of students in each scenario. After a while, they were invited to look at and choose relevant therapeutic picture cards which mirror the unique experience of the student in the relevant scenario and from the perspective of the teacher. Later on, they worked as a group and formed a collage on a large piece of paper by using therapeutic cards. They discussed why they chose those specific cards and what feelings and thoughts they refer to. Lastly, the teachers were expected to reflect on how they can contribute to these students’ psychological wellbeing and make a difference in his/her educational setting. Our content analysis revealed that each teacher was impressed by the experiences of the students and reflected on the contribution of the activity in terms of understanding their inner worlds of them. The researchers also observed the effect of the activity on facilitating empathy in teachers towards refugee students.

Keywords:

Refugee students, Multicultural education, Inclusive education, Professional development of teachers.