Abstract:

The aim of the study is to study teachers’ teaching experiences, multicultural qualifications and attitudes towards refugee students. The research work group consists of 107 class and branch teachers working at the Sivas center in the 2017-2018 educational year. At the center of Sivas, at the level of primary, secondary and secondary schools, a total of 6 schools are determined; the intensity of the presence of refugees students has been taken into account. In the study, the Turkish adaptation by Akçaoğlu and Arsal (2018) used 3 sub-dimensions and 25 items, including experience, attitude and multicultural competence, the "Multi-cultural competence scale (CYÖ)" which is made up of. The study determines the levels of experience, qualifications and attitudes of teachers with regard to refugees students; these levels are varied according to the branch, gender and attitudes of teachers. According to the arithmetic average of the scales that teachers receive from scale, the study found that teachers have a low competence in the field of multicultural education. A remarkable outcome in the study is that the teachers who participated in the study, according to the professional branches, have no significant differences in their perceptions of refugee students, experience and qualifications in the subdimensions and the overall scale, but in the subdimensions of attitude, they have significant differences in favour of class teachers. According to the gender of the teachers involved in the study, the perceptions of refugee students are not significantly different. Similarly, the result was that the teachers’ perceptions of refugees to students were not significantly differentiated according to their professional status.

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to determine teachers’ experience, multicultural efficacy, and attitude levels concerning refugee students. The study group consists of 107 teachers working in six schools (elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools) that were chosen from among schools located in Sivas city center and containing the biggest number of refugee students in the 2017-2018 academic year. The study employed “The Multicultural Efficacy Scale (MES)”, adapted to Turkish by Akçaoğlu and Arsal (2018). MES has three sub-dimensions: experience, attitude, and multicultural efficacy. It has 25 items in total, five of which are about experience, four about attitude, and 16 about multicultural efficacy. The study both determined the teachers’ experience, competence and attitude levels concerning refugee students and revealed whether such levels differed by teacher’s branch and teacher’s gender and professional seniority. The arithmetic means of the scores obtained by the teachers from the scale, the teachers were determined to have low perceptions of multicultural efficacy in education. Another remarkable result of the study is that the participating students’ perceptions concerning refugee students did not significantly differ by teacher’s branch in the experience and efficacy sub-dimensions and in the entire scale, but there was a significant difference in favor of elementary school teachers in the attitude sub-dimension. It can be said that the participating teachers’ perceptions concerning refugee children did not significantly differ in the by teacher’s gender. Similarly, it was found that the teachers’ perceptions concerning refugee children did not significantly differ by professional seniority.

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