Page 49 - IO1-Report

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

arrival in Germany/Italy/Turkey? - These are all questions and background information that are
necessary and important for a change of perspective, but also for the individual support and
promotion of students.
Last but not least, schools should be embedded in a network of psychological counselling
centers, associations for leisure activities, cultural organizations, migrant self-organizations,
libraries, further education institutions, etc., in order to support students in their participation
in everyday life.

However, teaching refugee children and young people not only poses challenges for the teachers and
pedagogical staff, but also for the teaching material. Teaching is done via language, which cannot be
used to such an extent, as already mentioned above. As a result, the work processes in a class are
severely impaired. Increased heterogeneity means that many teaching materials cannot be used. For
example, challenging tasks, such as in math, must be set in such a way that they can be solved with
basic language skills. Since traditional textbooks do not meet these requirements, new teaching
materials must be created. (Jungkamp/John-Ohnesorg 2016)

Against this background, Bilgehan Ayik, a secondary school mathematics teacher in Ankara, came up
with the idea of the ULM project. She narrates her experiences and motivation on starting the project
as “Teaching in integrated classes was always difficult because of many reasons. Refugee pupils didn't
know Turkish, and these were just children. If they don't understand anything in the class, of course,
they would feel unwanted, start to talk to each other in Arabic, distract other pupils, and even drop out
of school. Classroom management was highly challenging for all my colleagues, as well. However, I
believe that when you try to find a solution and empathize, there is always a solution. I started to
simplify the Turkish mathematics textbooks with fewer words and more images and gave my refugee
pupils as activity papers during my classes. I was also giving them some homework from those papers.
The results were amazing. I observed how their self-confidence improved in a year. They understood
that they were equally valuable members of this learning environment. And, they were successful as
much as others.” And she continues “After a few years, one of my refugee pupils came to me to say
that my efforts encouraged her to study, and now she is the most successful student among both
refugee and local pupils.”

The erasmus+ funded project "The universal language of mathematics" will build on these needs and
experiences in the field of teaching materials and books. The cooperation project of three NGOs in
Turkey, Italy and Germany aims at accelerating the process of refugee children integration into a host
society through the use of mathematics and therefore contributing to the promotion of communication
amongst refugee pupils, their parents, their teachers and native pupils. By developing new digital
learning materials, it contributes to the solution of shortage in supplementary learning materials for
refugee pupils and supports teachers and social workers in tackling early school leaving amongst refugee
pupils. (See more information on the project website: http://ulmproject.com/anasayfa)

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