In 2019, the number of migrants reached 272 million worldwide, which includes nearly 29 million refugees and asylum seekers (UNICEF, 2020). Specifically, the UN Refugee Agency [UNHCR] estimates that around 1.2 million refugees and migrants reached Europe in 2015 and the first months of 2016, primarily coming from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq (UNHCR, 2016). Thus, the unprecedented inflows of people have brought up significant challenges for many countries to develop longer-term strategies for the integration of migrants, including their education (European Commission, 2020b). Accordingly, the European Commission has encouraged the European Union (EU) member states since 2016 to integrate newly arrived immigrant and refugee students into their education systems to support their education and foster social inclusion (European Commission, 2020a). Yet, as recent reports demonstrate, overall, migrant students lag behind their native-born peers in most European education systems (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency [EACEA], 2019). To illustrate, the OECD’s latest PISA survey of 2018 showed that in most countries, non-immigrant students outperformed their immigrant peers in reading, even when socio-economic status is controlled for (OECD, 2019). Thus, educating immigrant and refugee students has become among the top education priorities in the European Commission’s Action Plan on the Integration of Third Country Nationals, which has primarily identified “the insufficient training for teachers in the skills and competences needed for the integration of newly-arrived migrants” among the top key challenges faced by policymakers and practitioners (European Commission, 2020b).

Turkey, as a candidate country for the EU and a neighboring country to Syria, has enacted an open-door policy for refugees and asylum seekers escaping conflict in Syria since 2011 (İçduygu, 2015), by granting them a legal “temporary protection” status (Kirişci, 2014). Today, it is home to the largest refugee population in the world, with close to 4.1 million refugees, including 3.6 million Syrians and nearly 330,000 asylum-seekers and refugees of other nationalities (UNHCR, 2020). Of them, over 1.6 million Syrian refugees are children, with the additional 120.000 non-Syrian refugee and asylum seeking children (UNICEF, 2019). Hence, as the Turkish education system has confronted massive flows of immigrant students, this has brought up substantial demands and challenges for teachers to quickly adapt to the dramatic demographic shifts in their classrooms, representing an ever-growing critical issue in teacher education. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the in-service needs of elementary teachers, who teach immigrant and refugee students, using “culturally relevant pedagogy” as a lens. Specifically, in responding to the educational needs of immigrants and refugees, many call for culturally responsive pedagogies that require teachers to advocate for more inclusive learning environments for addressing the varying needs of culturally diverse students, where not only can students experience academic success, but also they develop cultural competence and are empowered to gain a critical consciousness to critique existing power relations and advance equity and social justice (Gay, 2002, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2009). Thus, building on these discussions, the present study addresses the following research question:

What are the professional needs of in-service elementary teachers, using culturally relevant pedagogy as a lens?

Given that meeting the holistic needs of immigrant and refugee students in increasingly diverse classrooms has been a transnational concern, the present study contributes to the European Commission’s call for a collective response to develop effective teacher education policies globally to provide professional support for teachers. Particularly, as the Syrian refugee crisis presents an opportunity for the international community to draw key learnings from Turkey’s experiences of integrating a mass flux of refugees, the study further offers profound implications for promoting social cohesion and the well-being of all members of European societies, as well.

The study was designed as a phenomenological research as it aimed to investigate “the in-service needs of elementary teachers regarding the education of immigrant students”, by gaining insight into the lived experiences of several individuals to describe what is essential or common in their perceptions and experiences (Creswell, 2013; Marshall & Rossman, 2011). Based on criterion and snowball sampling strategies (Patton, 1990), the participants included 25 in-service elementary teachers who were purposefully selected from the elementary schools in Ankara and Afyon provinces in Turkey. First, employing criterion sampling, the researchers identified the public elementary schools located in the districts having high populations of immigrant students. Then, the elementary teachers who have had immigrant students in their classrooms and thereby, have been teaching immigrant students were selected from each school with the help of school principals. Along this process, the study also utilized snowball sampling through which each participant was asked to recommend who else to talk with. As phenomenological studies suggest, the data were collected through semi-structured in-depth individual interviews with the participants (Marshall & Rossman, 2011), which were conducted online by the researchers in response to COVID-19 outbreak. To this end, an interview schedule was developed that consisted of both demographical (e.g., teaching experience, class size, number of immigrant/refugee students in the class) and open-ended questions (e.g., What changes have you observed in your school and classroom as the population of immigrant/refugee students has increased?, What kind of challenges have you experienced in educating immigrant/refugee students?, What might have those challenges resulted from?). Then, a pilot study was conducted with 3 elementary teachers to check if the questions worked as intended and make the necessary revisions. The main data collection included 25 interviews, each of which nearly took 30-40 minutes. Ensuring the participants’ permissions, all interviews were audio-recorded and then, transcribed verbatim. The data have currently been analyzed through content analysis method using NVivo 10. Accordingly, the data have been, first, coded into smaller units by the researchers (Creswell, 2013), after which larger categories or themes will be derived based on the essential patterns among them (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Lastly, regarding the trustworthiness of the study, the researchers have employed multiple strategies to establish the credibility (e.g., pilot study, intercoder reliability, referential adequacy), transferability (e.g., purposive sampling), dependability and confirmability (e.g., audit trail) of the research (Marshall & Rossman, 2011), which will be presented further.

The preliminary findings indicated that the professional needs of elementary teachers in relation to culturally relevant pedagogy are: diversity-related, curriculum-related, and delivery-related. First, the participating teachers have diversity-related needs as they had difficulty in responding to the immigrant/refugee students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds and histories. Correspondingly, the participants remarkably highlighted the crucial role of using effective ways to involve parents in the education of their children as a bridge, while fostering parent involvement was also found challenging for them as immigrant/refugee parents were, reportedly, not so much interested in and/or capable of involving in their children’s education due to linguistic and economic barriers. Second, most participants articulated that they needed to know ways of enacting appropriate teaching pedagogies and incorporating useful materials supportive of culturally relevant curricula to connect immigrant/refugee students to the curriculum and foster their academic development and cultural competence. Yet, these have been challenged by the mandated curriculum including few opportunities for educating, supporting, and assessing immigrant/refugee students, especially in crowded classes and prevalent testing culture. Thus, most teachers did not perceive themselves encouraged and supported enough to empower culturally relevant pedagogy for all, while they also had both positive and negative conceptions of immigrants/refugees. Third, the participants’ professional needs were inevitably related to the delivery of the curriculum as well, especially as they expected a practice-based professional in-service training program incorporating pathways into building empathy, effective communication, and a shared classroom community supported with effective implementation of pedagogies to embrace immigrant/refugee students and their parents, as well as practicing ways to strengthen collaboration among colleagues. Considering these gaps and silences, this study offers invaluable insights for policymakers and teacher educators to reimagine and reconstruct the in-service and pre-service teacher education policies and practices both at national and international levels.

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