Teachers’ Views on Parent Involvement for Refugee Children’s Education

Abstract

Wars, with their exhaustively long effects, cause people leave theircountries and become refugees. Children are those who are affectedmost due to this situation. Undoubtedly, education is one of the basicrights of refugee children. Active and efficient family involvement iscrucial to achieve the sufficient level in education. In this context, theaim of this study is to determine the level of parent involvement ofrefugee children. The study is designed as a phenomenologicalresearch. To this end, semi-structured interviews have been conductedwith classroom teachers selected from those who have at least onerefugee student in her/his classroom in Mersin, a metropolitan area anda city center in the southern region of Turkey. With its multi-culturalcontext, Mersin hosts around 200.000 refugees according to the statisticsprovided by Mersin governorate. Maximum variation samplingmethod has been used to determine the participants. According to thefindings parent involvement is at low level for refugee students.Besides, it is determined that the parents of refugee students do notattend the parent-teacher meetings, they do not contact with teachers,and they do not support their children at home about their academicdevelopment. Parents’ inability to speak Turkish (the native languageof the teachers), their perception of their status in Turkey as temporary,the fact that they care physiological needs more than the education arefound as major reasons of low parent involvement for refugee students.