OPINIONS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION CENTER MANAGERS AND TEACHERS ON THE PROBLEMS THEY EXPERIENCE WITH SYRIAN TRAINEES

Abstract

Migration, which is a phenomenon as old as human history, has been one of the important debates around the world, especially with the increase in global population movements. There are many reasons why people leave their native land and migrate to new places. With the open border policy, as a result of the civil war in Syria recently, Turkey has been exposed to a serious wave of migration and the number of refugees has continuously increased. It has affected not only the demographic structure of the country, but also education practices, especially economy, health and security since 2011. The Syrians who lived in the refugee camps at first left the camps and took their place in the job market as in all areas of life. However, the unregistered work of refugees leaving the camps has emerged as an uncontrollable process. In this context, Turkey has made efforts to change and renew its education policies, especially for asylum seekers, and offer courses in formal education and non-formal education such as language education, vocational education, cultural education, education in primary and secondary schools, university education, for both school-age children and adults. In this study, the opinions of course administrators and teachers who are experienced with Syrian trainees studying in courses opened in public education centers in the context of education policies for Syrian adult refugees in Turkey since 2011 were researched and suggestions were presented for these problems. Qualitative research method was used in the study, data were collected with a semi-structured interview form and evaluated with content analysis. The study group consisted of a total of ten people, five teachers and five administrators, who worked in Izmir Karabağlar, Konak, Bornova Public Education Centers in the 2021-2022 academic year. According to the findings obtained in the research; administrators expressed the problems they experienced with Syrian trainees as adaptation, communication, health and nutrition, enrolling in the course, and teachers expressed these problems as adaptation, language or communication, belonging, cultural differences, absenteeism and transportation.

Keywords: Public education center, Adult education, Syrian refugees