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?