Educating immigrant and refugee students: A culturally relevant pedagogy perspective into elementary teachers’ professional needs in Türkiye

ABSTRACT

The education of teachers who can effectively respond to immigrant and refugee students’ needs has been a major issue in Türkiye and globally. Drawing on culturally relevant pedagogy, this phenomenological study explores the professional needs of 24 elementary teachers in Türkiye who teach immigrant and refugee students in their classes and were selected purposefully through criterion and snowball sampling strategies. The results of the individual interviews showed that teachers experienced several difficulties in developing students’ academic achievement, cultural competence, and socio-political consciousness. The study provides insights for policymakers and teacher educators to develop and implement culturally relevant in-service and pre-service teacher education policies and practices in Türkiye and beyond to support immigrant and refugee students holistically, especially in a current time of war when refugee crises continue to be a major transnational concern.

KEYWORDS:

• immigrants
• refugees
• culturally relevant pedagogy
• teacher education
• elementary teachers
• Türkiye

Acknowledgements

This study was presented at the annual meeting of the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) between September 6-10, 2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by TED University under Grant T-20-B2010-90057.