Abstract:

Turkey has been experiencing a wave of migration in recent years, which has important demographic, economic, and social influences. According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Children, every individual is a child until the age of 18 and has rights within the scope of four basic principles: the high benefit of the child, non-discrimination, the right to live and develop, and the right to participate. Refugee mobility, which has intensely been on the agenda in Turkey in recent years, affects both families in general and children and young people in particular. The concept of “adaptation” refers to the harmony between foreign and local parties, feeling a sense of union, and acquiring the necessary skills to live together (Çakırer-Özservet, 2015). The most distinctive characteristic of 2,072,290 registered Syrians in Turkey is that 54.2% consist of children below the age of 18. In other words, the number of Syrian children and young people is over 1 million and 123 thousand even when only the registered ones are taken into account. This incredible number should definitely be taken into account in future adaptation, education, and employment policies (Erdoğan, 2015). The demographic structure of Syrian children in Turkey is also noteworthy within themselves. There were 2,072,920 (registered) Syrians in Turkey on the 1st of October 2015 with 1 million 123 thousand of it below the age of 18 (children and young people). Their distribution based on age is as follows: 14% (286 thousand) are between 12 and 17; 20.2% (433 thousand) are between 5 and 11; and 20% (415 thousand) are between 0 and 4 (Erdoğan, 2015). Considering the bigness of these numbers, it is clear that the refugee children need to be included in an adaptation and betterment process in educational terms. In this sense, this study attempts to assess adaptation process of refugee children between 4-6 year-olds coming to Turkey. On this basis, case study, which is a qualitative research method, was employed to reveal an obvious situation in details. In order to obtain data, semi-structured interviews were made with 10 early childhood educators who have immigrant children in their classes. The participants were selected via snowball sampling method. One-to-one interviews were carried out with teachers about children’s adaptation process to the classroom and school. The interviews were made in the schools. The findings obtained through the interviews will be discussed in the light of the literature.

Keywords:

Refugee children, school adaptation, early childhood teachers, case study.