Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LearningtoBelong (Learning the Language of Belonging: Barriers to Inclusion in Refugee Education)
Période du rapport: 2021-07-05 au 2023-07-04
With its Global Education Strategy of 2012, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) embraced a policy shift that promotes the inclusion of refugee children into the national education systems of countries of first asylum. Educational inclusion is expected to develop refugee children’s human capital and to reinforce harmonious ties to the host society even when there exists no legal pathway to citizenship or permanent residency. The project Learning the Language of Belonging: Barriers to Inclusion in Refugee Education aimed to better understand the assumed relation between educational inclusion and social inclusion by examining a specific policy, that of ‘adaptation classes’, in Turkey. Turkey has been pursuing educational inclusion for especially Syrian children with the support of a series of European Union funded projects. While refugee children begin primary school in regular classes with citizen children, adaptation classes take place at the third-grade level and target those students who could not develop sufficient Turkish skills in their first two years at school. For a year in third grade, such refugee students are put in a separate classroom and receive intensive training in Turkish as a second language.
If educational inclusion is to go beyond granting access to schools, we need to advance the global discussion on how schooling can do more than re-placing refugee children at the margins of the host society. Accordingly, the project had the following specific objectives: (a) to contribute to the global discussion on barriers to social inclusion within refugee education. On a national scale, inform policymaking in Turkey, (b) to acquire new knowledge on how refugee communities make sense of and respond to institutional measures taken in the name of educational inclusion, particularly with regards to language instruction, (c) to develop a collaborative and empowering research methodology when working with refugees, and (d) to expand the fellow’s repertoire of methodological skills, improve networking and cooperation skills, and achieve higher social impact in research.
If educational inclusion is to go beyond granting access to schools, we need to advance the global discussion on how schooling can do more than re-placing refugee children at the margins of the host society. Accordingly, the project had the following specific objectives: (a) to contribute to the global discussion on barriers to social inclusion within refugee education. On a national scale, inform policymaking in Turkey, (b) to acquire new knowledge on how refugee communities make sense of and respond to institutional measures taken in the name of educational inclusion, particularly with regards to language instruction, (c) to develop a collaborative and empowering research methodology when working with refugees, and (d) to expand the fellow’s repertoire of methodological skills, improve networking and cooperation skills, and achieve higher social impact in research.
Work during this fellowship was divided into five packages. WP1 addressed integration to the host institution, project management and training activities. The fellow received methodological training especially on participatory action research. In cooperation with her host institution, she organized a workshop for teachers of refugees in Turkey. The workshop aimed to introduce Turkish teachers to teaching examples from different parts of the world and to engage in experience sharing. WP2 and WP3 addressed data collection and analysis. The fellow followed two adaptation classes over the course of two school semesters through weekly, full-day classroom observations, interviewed teachers and students, and conducted focus group discussions with the students’ caregivers. Methodologically, the project aspired to develop a collaborative and empowering approach. The fellow used the training she received on the use of participatory action research methods in research with the students.
While proposing the project, the fellow had focused more on the question of how language learning would affect belonging. Yet, the research revealed how the relation went both ways: children needed a sense of belonging for language learning to take place. There is a growing global literature around the significance of teachers in refugee education. One research finding of this project pertains to the role teachers play in fostering a sense of belonging for refugee students. Teachers of adaptation classes are precariously employed on temporary project-basis to specifically teach refugee students. Thus, the integration of refugee students into public schools has gone hand in hand with the production of a new sub-category of teachers. Their employment conditions prevent teachers from developing a sense of belonging to the occupation and to their workplaces. Teachers struggle to convey a sense of belonging to students when they themselves do not experience it. Their uneasy maintenance at the fringes of school communities further reinforces the understanding that refugee education remains exceptional and secondary.
Language acquisition is perceived to be central to social inclusion by policymakers. Yet, when language acquisition is understood to be a merely cognitive process and not enough attention is paid to (gendered) language socialization not only but especially at school, learning outcomes are unsatisfactory, as children themselves acknowledge that “they keep forgetting what they learn”. Thus, adaptation classes exemplified the simultaneous production of integrative and disintegrative outcomes in refugee education. On the one hand, educational authorities promoted the development of human capital, regardless of who possessed it. On the other hand, in public institutions such as schools, cultural differences continued to mark who did not belong, which led refugee students to experience everyday bordering. Consequently, educational policies that depended on an understanding of human capital emptied of its social context were rendered inapplicable by lived experiences of schooling.
WP4 addressed dissemination of project results to the academic community. The fellow made two international conference presentations, and two articles are to come out of the project. WP5 addressed dissemination of project results to other, potential users. The fellow communicated the project results to local educational authorities such as school principals to facilitate administrative practice and to national educational authorities to facilitate policy decision-making. The fellow collaborated with multiple teacher networks, and also organized meetings with refugee caregivers, presenting project results that may assist them in taking part in children’s education.
While proposing the project, the fellow had focused more on the question of how language learning would affect belonging. Yet, the research revealed how the relation went both ways: children needed a sense of belonging for language learning to take place. There is a growing global literature around the significance of teachers in refugee education. One research finding of this project pertains to the role teachers play in fostering a sense of belonging for refugee students. Teachers of adaptation classes are precariously employed on temporary project-basis to specifically teach refugee students. Thus, the integration of refugee students into public schools has gone hand in hand with the production of a new sub-category of teachers. Their employment conditions prevent teachers from developing a sense of belonging to the occupation and to their workplaces. Teachers struggle to convey a sense of belonging to students when they themselves do not experience it. Their uneasy maintenance at the fringes of school communities further reinforces the understanding that refugee education remains exceptional and secondary.
Language acquisition is perceived to be central to social inclusion by policymakers. Yet, when language acquisition is understood to be a merely cognitive process and not enough attention is paid to (gendered) language socialization not only but especially at school, learning outcomes are unsatisfactory, as children themselves acknowledge that “they keep forgetting what they learn”. Thus, adaptation classes exemplified the simultaneous production of integrative and disintegrative outcomes in refugee education. On the one hand, educational authorities promoted the development of human capital, regardless of who possessed it. On the other hand, in public institutions such as schools, cultural differences continued to mark who did not belong, which led refugee students to experience everyday bordering. Consequently, educational policies that depended on an understanding of human capital emptied of its social context were rendered inapplicable by lived experiences of schooling.
WP4 addressed dissemination of project results to the academic community. The fellow made two international conference presentations, and two articles are to come out of the project. WP5 addressed dissemination of project results to other, potential users. The fellow communicated the project results to local educational authorities such as school principals to facilitate administrative practice and to national educational authorities to facilitate policy decision-making. The fellow collaborated with multiple teacher networks, and also organized meetings with refugee caregivers, presenting project results that may assist them in taking part in children’s education.
Existing global literature on refugee education emphasizes that inclusion can best be provided through relation-building at school. This project focused on the role of teachers and school cultures in enabling (or disabling) relation-building. Pitfalls observed in the inclusion of refugee students to the Turkish education system (such as the occupational stratification experienced by teachers of refugees or the tension between human capital development and management of cultural difference at school) have relevance beyond this country and call attention to the role that schools could play in providing children with a sense of belonging to in turn facilitate language learning, rather than language learning being a precondition for and preceding integration. The literature on second language socialization highlights the role of social stratification (based on race, gender, class, legal status) in shaping both the process and the outcomes of language learning. This project has also illustrated how language learning is mediated by the constant risk of rejection and erasure that refugee students face. It follows that educational inclusion cannot only target refugee students but needs to target the whole of school community in order to activate the link between belonging and learning. These points would apply to European Commission’s new EU Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027, which identifies as a main action “inclusive education and training from early childhood on” and spotlights “continued language learning”.