ATTITUDES OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TOWARDS REFUGEE STUDENTS

Abstract

Although the refugee problem has been on the agenda of the world for centuries, it has increased its influence gradually due to the conflicts and wars in the Middle East especially after the 2000s. In this sense, after the civil war that erupted in Syria in 2011, there has been an influx of refugees into Turkey, and today millions of Syrians are forced to emigrate to Turkey. Most of the refugees coming through migration are under the age of 18, defined as "school age". Therefore, one of basic problems faced by the school-age refugees, who had to come to Turkey from Syria, is access to education. Thanks to immediate actualization of the efforts of the Republic of Turkey, immigrant students were placed in public schools with an aim to achieve necessary orientation. The aim of this research is to determine the attitudes of secondary school students towards refugee students. The study was attended by 5, 6, 7 and 8th grade students studying in schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Keçiören district of Ankara, in the 2018-2019 academic year. In the research, quantitative research method was used to collect data. “Attitude Scale towards Refugee Students” developed by Kılcan, Çepni and Kılınç (2017) was used as data collection tool. Within the framework of the purpose of the research, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) program was used for the necessary statistical analyses of the collected data regarding students’ responds to the attitude scale. It was revealed that the attitudes of the participants towards refugee students showed a significant difference according to the variables of gender, grade, having a refugee neighbor and refugee friends. Based on these results, it is recommended to provide awareness training for students studying in the same environment with refugee students to prevent secondary school students from developing negative attitudes towards refugees. Based on the positive attitude of secondary school students who have both a refugee neighbor and a refugee friend, it is suggested that different studies, especially cultural adaptation trainings, should be conducted for the social acceptance of Syrians who are in a sense guests in our country due to immigration.