There has been a significant increase in research on the integration of immigrant students to social life and education systems in their host countries. Studies mostly focus on barriers to the integration of these children and to find possible solutions, whereas there is no emphasis on creating an educational environment where these children and native children can work and learn together. School climates play a vital role for students to feel happy, valued and learn effectively. A positive school climate occurs when all school members feel safe, included, accepted and when their positive behaviours are supported. Freiberg (1999) describe school climate as the heart and soul of the school, the essence that attracts teachers and students to love school and makes them want to be a part of it. 

Immigrant students’ view of considering themselves as part of society and the education system substantially impacts their adaptation process. Kelley, Thornton, and Daugherty, (2005) stated that a positive school climate boosts the morale and motivation of administrations, teachers, and students, causing schools to have high academic performance. Researchers claim that a positive school climate relatively improves overall school quality (Smith, 2002), positively affects attitudes and behaviours in school (Akman, 2010), promotes fair and consistent disciplinary policies, values family support and participation (Özdemir, Sezgin, Şirin, Karip, and Erkan, 2010), and positively influences academic achievement (Şişman and Turan, 2004; Brennan, 2015). A negative school climate is reflected adversely on academic success and reduces cooperation between members of schools (Bahçetepe and Giorgettii, 2015). If schools want to create healthy and effective climates, they should have strong relationships with teachers, students, other employees, families, and other communities (Çınkır, 2004). A school climate where immigrant students can feel happy and safe is needed to facilitate their integration to society and educational systems.

Some negative factors affect the adaptation of immigrant students to schools. Hoy and Miskel (2010) state that students do not want to go to schools that have a negative, unpleasant, or discriminating climate or where they feel excluded. Blum (2005) argues that a negative school climate decreases students’ academic success and brings about violent behaviour or a tendency towards it. Studies highlight experiences such as low communication and cooperation between immigrant and native students, factions, exclusion (Aslan, 2020; Börü and Boyacı, 2016; Topsakal et al., 2013), discrimination, violence, and bullying (Çınkır, 2018; Maynard, Vaughn, Salas-Wright, and Vaughn, (2016). Plenty and Jonsson (2017) and Gelekçi (2010) stated that exclusions could hinder the integration of migrant youth into society and education systems.

Recently, there has been concern among education politicians and parents in Turkey that sending native children to schools with high proportions of migrant children could harm the educational performance of local children. According to Jensen (2021), this concern drives policymakers to think about ways how these children with different languages, cultures, religions can coexist with others. As a solution, an integrative school climate is closely related to seeing diversity in school as an opportunity to increase unity and application wealth rather than a problem and fostering positive attitudes and beliefs towards this difference (Alton-Lee, 2003; Dyson, Farrell, Polat, Hutcheson, and Gallanaugh, 2004). With school at the centre of refugee children's daily lives, the school climate is critical to creating a healthy, safe learning environment.

This study will identify evidence-based school factors for an integrative school climate where native and immigrant children can work and learn together and make recommendations for transferring this information to school environments.

In the survey answers to the following questions will be sought. 

To increase the body of research in this area, this paper will provide an analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. The first phase of the study will be structured as a quantitative study. It will consists of survey results from 100 voluntary refugee students attending secondary schools in Ankara. The second phase of the study will be structured as a qualitative study. It will consists of a video library of 5 school principals, 10 teachers, 5 refugee students and their parents and 5 local students outlining their stories working and learning in a multicultural education setting. This phase will include developing and agreeing a storytelling protocol by the participating schools. A series of qualitative guideline-based interviews (video-recorded-excluding refugee students and their parents) will be conducted in each school. The quantitative data will be analyzed through descriptive statistical analysis techniques. The data collected by interviews will be analyzed through qualitative content analysis. In the survey answers to the following questions will be sought. 1. What do school administrators, teachers, students and parents think about the current school climate? 2. What are the characteristics of a school climate that supports student learning? 3. To create a school climate that supports students' learning; what are the roles of administrators, teachers, parents and students? 4. What are the possible support strategies and policies for creating school climate for refugee students?

This paper presents and discusses various strategies for creating a safe school climate in which refugee and native students can work and learn together. Since the existing literature focuses mainly on the integration of immigrant students into society and the education system, this study will examine the characteristics of the current school climate and what needs to be done to create a safe and secure school climate. The preliminary findings of the study indicate that the key elements for engaging and involving refugee students and their parents in developing and implementing strategies such as creating a welcoming school climate and support through extracurricular activities, developing teaching and learning materials at different levels and stages are considered important.

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