Challenges for the school in a migration society – a critical incidents analysis

ABSTRACT

The large number of newly arrived people from other countries, particularly children and youth, represents a major challenge for schools and school systems in the EU-28. The present study, conducted in Germany, investigated this situation using the critical incident technique. Critical incidents were collected in group discussions with teachers and principals about challenging events in the context of growing migration. The incidents, including their perceived causes and consequences, were categorised using qualitative content analysis. Events that were frequently present in teachers’ everyday work included various types of conflicts concerning pupils, difficult cooperation between teachers and parents and parents banning their children from taking part in particular school activities. The identified causes for such events were diverse, including misunderstandings, diverging cultural and religious concepts, language barriers, structural constraints and some pupils’ traumatic experiences influencing the school community. The described incidents had far-reaching consequences, especially for parent–school cooperation and for pupils’ integration in the classroom community and academic and personal development. The final part of this article discusses and illustrates how the results can contribute to developing ideas and measures to deal with the identified challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical incidents
• cultural concepts
• integration
• language barrier
• parent-school cooperation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Legend for all tables: total: discussants‘ statements in total; corr: statements which were consistently assigned to a category by both encoders (‘correlating‘); non: statements which were not consistently assigned to a category by both encoders (‘non-correlating‘); IRR: inter-rater reliability.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund [AM1400208].

Notes on contributors

Sabine Weiss

Sabine Weiss is an Associate Professor for School Education at the department of Education and Rehabilitation at Ludwigs-Maximilians-University Munich in Germany. Her main research interests are inclusion, career motivation and teachers’ health.

Marcus Syring

Marcus Syring is an Associate Professor for School Education at the department of Education and Rehabilitation at Ludwigs-Maximilians-University Munich in Germany. His main research interests are teacher professionalisation, heterogeneity in school and classroom management.

Ewald Kiel

Ewald Kiel is Chair for School Education and Director of the Department of Education and Rehabilitation at Ludwigs-Maximilians-University Munich in Germany. His main research interests are teacher professionalisation, inclusion, career choice motives and intercultural education.