Page 35 - IO1-Report

KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for School Education
The Universal Language of Mathematics (2018-1-TR01-KA201-059704)

friends (Table-7). The situation is worse for Turkish students; lower fraction of Turkish girls (17%) and
boys (19%) always plays with their refugee friends (Table-8). Among these low ratios, willingness of
both refugee and Turkish boys to play games with each other is higher relative to girls as expected.
On the other hand, the majority of Turkish students are reluctant to play with their refugee friends. This
fact is a signal for very serious problem and urgent precaution is needed. Otherwise, the integration
process of RS come to a halt and RS start to isolate themselves individually or as groups. Then, this
isolation step-by-step leads to exclusion of RS by Turkish students, fights (families become part of these
fights), hatefulness against others, learned helplessness, attendance problems, dropping out school,
taking part in gangs and finally racism. School managers and teachers must give very special attention
to encourage both refugee and Turkish students to play with each other. Teachers should promote and
take part in games between refugee and Turkish students. Besides, MEB should support school
managers and teachers with related policies to foster interaction among refugee and Turkish students
through playing games.

3.4.2. Communication of Refugee Students with Teachers

As a second measure of refugee students’ integration to Turkish Education System (TES), this survey
investigates the students’ frequency of communication with their teachers and the results are
summarized in Table-10. 22% of RS girls and 21% of RS boys rarely ask a question to their teachers
during the lectures. The difference between rarely asking boys and girls is not statistically significant.
Thus, more than one fifth of RS are very reluctant to ask question to their teachers.

Refugee Students Turkish Students

Girls Boys Girls Boys

Can you Always 23% < 35% 52% ≈ 50%
ask question Sometimes 55% > 44% 40% ≈ 41%
to your teachers? Rarely 22% ≈ 21% 8% ≈ 9%

Table – 9: Communication of students with their teachers.
(Note: The sign ≈ means that the difference is not statistically significant.)

In the same school environment, the fraction of Turkish students who rarely ask question to their
teacher is very low relative to RS. It is 8% for Turkish girls and 9% for Turkish boys. Unlike RS, there
is no significant difference between Turkish girls and boys in terms of their frequency of asking questions
to their teachers. The majority of Turkish students always ask question to their teachers (52% and
50%). The fraction of RS who always ask question is very low relative to Turkish students. Especially
for RS girls, the fraction is very low, 23% which is less than half of the percentage of Turkish girls.

Therefore, it is revealed that the communication of RS with their teachers is very low relative to Turkish
students in the same class. Teachers should encourage RS to ask question. It would not waste of time.
Instead, both refugee and Turkish students get opportunity of better understanding.

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