Strengthening teachers competences for the education of refugee students

Due to the fact that Syrian refugees prefer our district to live, it has been in the immigrant-receiving position for the first time after many years. This has led our teachers to be caught unprepared for teaching in multi-ethnic classes. There is not any available standard program of the MEB (the Turkish Ministry of National Education) that can be applied in case of such an immigration situation. Various trainings have been provided for the teachers in our district regarding the education and training processes of the Syrian refugee children, but these trainings were not enough and the problems continued. The need to strengthen our teachers’ competences such as classroom management, empathy and intercultural learning in the light of successful practices has emerged in order for the refugee students to adapt to their new lives and the education and training process in our country. It is clear that this need will only be met through the transfer of successful implementations for education and training of the refugees. The feedback received from the teachers shows that the seminars organized before are not successful enough.

We will prepare implementation guidelines that will enable both our institution and other project partner institutions to transfer the successful practices by evaluating the successful practices the project partner institutions use for the education of their refugee students. We will introduce and explain the implementation guidelines for the realization of the successful practices to the teachers of the project partner institutions and to those teachers in the region of the project partner institutions through the seminars we will organize. By this means, we aim to introduce the teachers to the successful practices and to put these practices into effect thanks to the implementation guidelines regarding the education of the refugee students. In this respect, we will ensure a sustainable increase in the quality of the education and training services to be provided for the refugee students.

Even after the end of the project period, the teachers will be the target audience of the project in order to continue the effect of the project.

Project Working Groups will be set up in order to evaluate the successful practices for refugee students’ education, to get teachers’ and trainers’ views and suggestions, to put good practices into effect, and to prepare Teacher Implementation Guides that will provide concrete solutions to the problems teachers are experiencing. Three (3) Project Working Groups will be formed. Eight (8) teachers from Ömer Matlı Primary School and Murat Hüdavendigar Primary School which are subject to the Karacabey District Directorate of National Education and 5 (five) teachers from both Berufskolleg Ostvest – Sekundarstufe II the Institute for Cultural Relations Policy will be assigned to the Project Working Groups.

The project working groups will assess and evaluate on site the successful practices of each project partner regarding the education of refugee students. They will get opinions from teachers and evaluate the suggestions. They will then prepare Teacher Implementation Guides to guide teachers. With reference to these guidelines, each project partner school will begin implementing successful practices for two months. Project Working Groups will assess the implementation of these practices and will revise the Teacher Implementation Guides according to the result of feedback. How the ultimate Teacher Implementation Guide will be successfully used will be explained initially to the teachers of the project partner schools and to the teachers in the region of the project partner afterwards.

We will share the project acquisitions and the Teacher Implementation Guides on web platforms such as;
1- The project web site that we will create for the project and commit to keep it active for at least two years
2-the web sites of the partner institutions
3-EBA (Education Information Network), A.D.A.M, School Education Gateway etc.
Thus, independent of the duration of the project, teachers will be able to access project outputs from any place where the internet connection is available.