Okul Öncesi Öğretmenlerinin Mülteci Çocuklara Yönelik Türkçe Öğretimi Konusundaki Görüşleri
Preschool Teachers' Views about Teaching Turkish to Refugee Children

Summary/Abstract: One of the biggest issues refugee children faces is the education they receive in their country of immigration. Teachers in preschool, which is the first stage of education, need to be supported in teaching these children the official language of their homeland. It is thus important to determine the kind of problems that teachers in Türkiye experience in the process of teaching Turkish and the solutions they have found to these problems. The purpose of this study was thus to examine the views of preschool teachers about teaching Turkish to refugee children. The phenomenological method, one of the qualitative research approaches, was used in the study. The research utilized qualitative data collection methods to better understand the experiences of those involved. The study group consisted of 12 preschool teachers who taught refugee children in the spring semester of the 2023–2024 academic year. The participants were determined using the criterion sampling technique, which is one of the purposive sampling methods. In this regard, having refugee children in their classrooms and working in provinces with dense refugee populations were the criteria used to determine the participants of this study. Twelve preschool teachers working in three different provinces, Kilis, Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa, and who had refugee children in their classrooms were reached. A semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher was used as the data collection tool in the study. The data collection process for the study was carried out directly by the researcher to ensure reliability and consistency. One-to-one interviews were conducted with the participants using the semi-structured interview form prepared in advance. The content analysis method was used to analyze the data in the study. The themes and codes that emerged as a result of the analysis of the data obtained within the scope of the research are shown in the figure below. A total of four themes were obtained: “Teacher Status”, “Turkish Teaching Process”, “Cooperation with Families” and “Solving Language Problems”. Under the theme of Teacher Status, teachers' competencies and the situations or issues they felt they would like to receive support for emerged. Accordingly, it was determined that none of the participant teachers considered themselves competent in teaching Turkish to refugee children and that the courses they had taken in high school did not provide any gains in this regard. The language problems faced by refugee children were always also problematic for the teachers. It was determined that the teachers who participated in the study faced issues when teaching Turkish with regard to “communication, socialization, family support, resistance, and number of children”. The solutions to these problems were found to be using visual materials, concept cards, pairing refugee children with Turkish children, peer support, and calling in an interpreter. The materials that the teachers most said they needed for language teaching were technological tools and books. It was also determined that some teachers did not know what kind of materials were needed. Within the scope of this study, it was revealed that the preschool teachers cooperated with refugee parents while teaching Turkish to their children by organizing parent-teacher conferences, communicating with older siblings/parents, sending videos, communicating via SMS/WhatsApp, using translation programs and using interpreters. The obstacles that prevented teachers from cooperating with refugee families were identified as the families' unwillingness to teach Turkish and communication problems. When the results of the study were evaluated, it was found that teachers need to be supported in terms of methods, approaches and materials in order to solve the problems arising from teaching Turkish to refugee children. In addition, the number of refugee children to native children should be kept at a specific ratio in the class. Teaching Turkish in classes with a large number of refugee children makes it more difficult for teachers. In addition, families should be supported in teaching Turkish and should be better informed about preschool education. In this context, training sessions could be organized for families. The fact that the children of immigrants still have problems with language despite being born and raised in Turkey shows that there has been a lack of education policy regarding this issue. Policies and practices for the education of these children should be reviewed and better practices to support teachers and families should be implemented.

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