The massive scale of human movement due to the ongoing crises, particularly in the last 20 years, have engendered the complexity of challenges in the reception of refugee populations in the host country and their integration into the education systems. Evidence shows that refugee children from refugee backgrounds are five times more likely to be out of school compared to those without refugee background and 50% of refugee children have access to primary education compared to 90% of non–refugee children. On the contrary, we are informed that education is the main gateway and tool for healthy integration in the countries with high refugee intake (Crul et al., 2017).Research on educational responses for forced-migrants, refugees and displaced people has increased in recent years, whereas research specific to  educational leadership addressing particularly refugee students  is still limited. Refugee status is distinct from other migrants due to their causes of departure, which in most cases results from violence, war, conflict, economic or political crises. Moreover, the journey to safer places frequently leads to trauma and loss of basic needs (McBrien, 2005; Şirin & Sirin, 2015). The official definition of a refugee in the Refugee Convention of 1951 (UNHCR, 2011, p. 14) is: ‘a person who has fled due to justified fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or opinion; who is outside his national state and cannot, or refuses to return to that State, or a person without citizenship who resides outside his or her permanent residence due to that concern and cannot or will not return to that state for that reason.’ Therefore, given their limited legal rights and vulnerable state psychologically and financially; addressing the needs of refugees and forcibly displaced people within the education systems require particular attention from the policy makers and educators. As educational leadership involves different actors within the educational systems such as district leaders, school principals, and middle leaders (e.g. assistant principals, teacher leaders), the understanding and implementations of the policies within the meso- and micro-level hierarchies may also be varied. Relevant studies, therefore, exemplify the direct and indirect impact of national and inter/intra-systemic policies on the challenges and implementations of educational leaders (Arar, 2020; Bogotch & Kervin, 2019; Örücü et al., 2021). In any case, school leaders and teachers have the greater responsibility for the healthy integration of refugee students in schools.

As we believe that there is a need to go beyond the deficit discourses that could position refugee students as traumatized and needy (Wilkinson et al., 2017), this study potentially contributes to identifying the gaps and explore the themes and frameworks in the knowledge base for refugee education leadership in schools.

In this regard,  the aim of this study is to present a systematic review of recent international empirical evidence, published in peer-reviewed journals between 2009 and 2021, on educational leadership for forced-migrants and refugees through meta-analysis. We systematically collected, documented, scrutinized, and critically analyzed the extant research on educational leadership for the forcibly displaced people, refugees and asylum-seekers. Three questions guided this review: (a) What are the major themes in the literature about educational leadership for refugees? (b) What are the dominant theoretical and methodological frameworks in the related publications? (c) What is missing to date in scholarship about educational leadership for refugees?

This study offers a meta-analysis scoping review based on the methodological linessuggested by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) who characterized a scoping review as the mapping of a corpus of knowledge in an attempt to identify its main themes. To conduct a comprehensive search for publications in peer-refereed journals, various research databases were used. We mined Scopus, GoogleScholar, EMERALD, Taylor and Francis Online, Elsevier, EBSCO host, J–STOR, Springer–Link, SAGE Journals Online, and ProQuest, for peer-reviewed articles between January 2009 and February 2021 using the search terms: refugees, asylum seekers, displaced persons, newcomers, forced-migrants or immigrants, or temporary protection, or immigrant or migration, and educational leadership keywords (e.g. administrator, superintendent, assistant-superintendent, head-teacher, principal, educational leader, vice-principal, deputy principal, assistant principal). We elicited more than 175 articles. We reduced the corpus to 108 studies utilizing the following inclusion criteria: (a) they were published in English; (b) they were published in peer–reviewed journals; (c) they used common quantitative, qualitative or mixed methodologies; (d) they included displaced persons, asylum seekers, refugees and/or forced-migrants in their sample of participants; (e) they were conducted only in K-12 education settings and (f)they dealt with educational leadership. Then, we conducted another selection through pre-set elimination criteria that will be explained in the session. In total, we came up with 31 papers, all of which are peer-reviewed journal articles, to be included in this review based on the selection and elimination criteria. As of data analysis, to synthesize the knowledge accumulated by the 31 identified articles, the data underwent qualitative content analysis using a narrative synthesis that allows classification of content topics (Saini & Shlonsky, 2012). The initial coding was completed by each researcher, first individually and then through comparison of codes until reaching an agreement. Next, a third researcher out of the authors’ team scanned the articles and coded the articles. This way, we reached a consensus over the themes through intercoder reliability. We utilized thematic analysis and narrative synthesis for indepth understanding and documented in detail to increase the reliability of the findings. Using this approach, after reading the articles, the authors who have published extensively on the studied topic, performed consistent comparison to discover patterns, foci, themes and sub-themes, until establishing the final framework of three core-themes and sub-themes. During this iterative process, we got engaged in each step reflexively and repeated to cover all themes comprehensively to ensure validity and reliability.

The systematic review identified three major themes that stemmed from meta-analysis of the literature about educational leadership for refugees and displaced: (a) Models of welcoming educational leadership; (b) Educational leaders’ responses to refugees’ needs; and (c) Advocacy for social cohesion and community engagement. In each theme, we provide a short theoretical overview preceded by several sub-themes in which empirical findings are reviewed. Theoretical and methodological tendencies , geographical sources of knowledge base and empirical evidence of the importance of leadership and policy in shaping the lives of refugee students will be provided in detail with a critical discussion , and recommendations for future research and educational interventions to better address refugees’ needs globally will be discussed in detail .

Arar, K. (2020). School leadership for refugees’ education– Social justice leadership for immigrants, migrants and refugees. Routledge Arksey, H., & O’Malley, L. (2005). Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(1), 19–32. Wilkinson, J., Santoro, N., & Major, J. (2017). Sudanese refugee youth and educational success:The role of church and youth group in supporting cultural and academic adjustment andschooling achievement. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 60, 210–219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.04.