Session Information
05 SES 13 A, Migrants, refugees and Roma youth
Paper session
Contribution
The Competence Centre "Flight, Trauma and Disability" at the Institute for Rehabilitation Sciences at the Humboldt-University Berlin aims at the comprehensive professional development of teachers, educators and social workers who accompany minor refugees in school. A special focus of the Competence Center is the educational support and encouragement of refugee children and adolescents with disabilities. This group of children and adolescents must be considered as multiply vulnerable to long-term traumatic stress as well as to marginalisation in school and society. Due to pronounced biographical and current burdens as well as disability-specific needs, the support of this group is associated with special challenges for teachers in inclusive as well as in special schools. However, the current teacher training courses in most European countries do not provide a profound qualification for this task. Especially the area of reflexive professional development is largely neglected in Germany, but also in France, Austria or the United Kingdom, for example (Brookfield, 2009).
The Competence Centre therefore provides the following services:
- Trauma sensitive qualification (with special regard to the refugee minors) for teachers, social workers and educators working with young refugees in primary, secondary, vocational and special schools.
- Specific qualification for special educational needs in the context of trauma, which can be attended as an advanced course or as an independent further training.
- Supervision with a focus on professional relationships with severely burdened children and adolescents.
Initial scientific findings on the effectiveness of trauma- and flight-focused training courses are already available (Zimmermann, 2016; Friedrich et al. 2019). Nevertheless, we have been accompanying all courses at the Competence Centre by quantitative and qualitative research.
The research resumes the preliminary studies and focuses on evaluating the effects of regular further training and consultation offers.
The following research questions are focussed in the investigations:
- What burdens do educational professionals experience in their work as a result of the traumatic experiences of young refugees (with disabilities)?
- What flight- and disability-specific needs does the target group have?
- How does the self-efficacy of the professionals in their work with young refugees change through trauma pedagogical and flight-specific support (primarily in the form of further training and supervision)?
- Which good practice examples do teachers develop as a result of the qualification in pedagogical practice?
- Which institutional frameworks do professionals need in order to be able to carry out pedagogical-professional work in the context of trauma and disability (with special attention to the aspect of cooperation)?
- What limits do professionals experience despite professional support?
Method
The burdens on professionals and the effects of further education are surveyed longitudinally. Since we include all participants of the training courses in the study, one can assume valid results despite the fact that the study is quite small overall. To ensure scientifically valid results, we use a series of quantitative and qualitative survey methods. 1) The quantitative surveys on the self-efficacy of professionals use the "scales of teacher self-efficacy" (Schmitz & Schwarzer, 2002). This is a research instrument that has been tested in international surveys and was already used in the pilot study cited above (Zimmermann, 2016) and has been further developed for the current study. In addition, new scales focusing on reflective and collaborative skills were developed and integrated. 2) Qualitative, topic-centred interviews and group discussions with 40 experts may bring out the depth dimension of the effectiveness of continuing education and its transfer to educational practice (Schorn, 2000; Mayring, 2008). In addition, we’ll carry out a depth-hermeneutic evaluation of central thematic areas of the interviews, which is essential for the trauma context, as this allows further insights into the specific trauma-related dynamics of school work with this target group to be worked out. 3) Furthermore, we evaluate the courses continuously. At the end of the project, well-founded concepts for successful continuing education in the given context will be derived from this. Thus, the scientific survey is based on the services offered by the Competence Centre. The mentioned quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection allow a multimodal recording of central evaluation criteria. The data quality is to be continuously verified and documented so that the partial data sets can finally be merged for multi-level analytical evaluation. A triangulation of the data will thus be possible beyond mere descriptive and inferential statistical procedures.
Expected Outcomes
The results of the seminar evaluation so far point to the (unexpectedly) good opportunities of online based further education, even with focus on trauma and forced migration. We expect the quantitative survey to yield well-founded results with regard to the subjective burden and self-efficacy perception of teachers. In the given context these research results have a high originality value, also in the European context. Although numerous studies on the self-efficacy of teachers are available, they do not relate to the work with minor refugees, sometimes traumatised children and adolescents. The qualitative interviews and group discussions provide an in-depth insight into the relationship between school structure, support and the self-experience of teachers. Although there have been delays due to the pandemic, the initial results point to considerable processes of change in the schools in this field of work. At the same time, however, there are major difficulties in the area of cooperation with non-school partners. According to initial analyses, stereotypical images of refugee students reflect the professionals high demands and stresses.
References
Brookfield, S. (2009). The concept of critical reflection: promises and contradictions. European Journal of Social Work, 12(3), 293–304. Friedrich, S.; Becker, C.; Zimmermann, D. (2018): Schulische Teilhabe im Kontext von Flucht, Behinderung und Benachteiligung - Forschungsprojekt an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In: Behinderung und Internationale Entwicklung 29 (2), S. 12–20. Mayring, Philipp (2008). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken (10. Aufl.). Weinheim: Beltz. Schmitz, G. S.; Schwarzer, R. (2002): Individuelle und kollektive Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung von Lehrern. In: M. Jerusalem & D. Hopf (Hrsg.), Selbstwirksamkeit und Motivationsprozesse in Bildungsinstitutionen (S. 192–214). Weinheim: Beltz (Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, Beiheft; 44) . Schorn, A. (2000): Das "themenzentrierte Interview". Ein Verfahren zur Entschlüsselung manifester und latenter Aspekte subjektiver Wirklichkeit. In: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung 1 (2), Art. 23. Steinlin, C.; Fischer, S.; Dölitzsch, C.; Fegert, J. M.; Schmid, M. (2015): Pädagogische Arbeit in Kinder- und Jugendhilfeeinrichtungen - eine gefahrgeneigte Tätigkeit. In: Trauma und Gewalt 9 (1), S. 22–33. Zimmermann, D. (2016): Traumapädagogik in der Schule. Pädagogische Beziehungen mit schwer belasteten Kindern und Jugendlichen. Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag (Psychoanalytische Pädagogik, Band 45).
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