A qualitative analysis of factors affecting academic achievement of Turkish students in German primary schools

Upon the agreement signed by Turkey and Germany in 1961, thousands of Turkish citizens emigrated to Germany as workers. Beginning from 1974, thanks to the family reunion agreement, these workers have begun to take their spouses and children with them to Germany. In early times of this emigration trend, these workers were thought to be employed on a temporary basis and would return to Turkey however most of them settled down in the country for good and built a new life space there. Children, speaking Turkish at home are learning German in Kindergartens (preschools) and continue to the secondary schools where, at the end of the fourth year children are guided towards a variety of next stage schools. While children, speaking a good level of German can have the chance to study at high schools which give the students the opportunity of university education upon graduation, most of the students coming from immigrant families study at relatively inferior vocational schools. The purpose of this study is to determine the factors affecting the academical success of Turkish students based on the opinions of the administrators, teachers, students and parents at the preschools in Germany and formulate suggestions to raiese the academics achievement level of the students. Qualitative research model was used for the study and research data were collected with a semi structured interview form. Working group of the study, comprised of 9 primary school administrators, 10 primary school teachers, 11 consulate teachers, 9 students and 18 parents, 57 in total working, studying or living in Karlsruhe and Freiburg region of the State of Baden-Württenberg were chosen using "Maximum Diversity Sampling", interviews, each one taking approximately 40 minutes with the help of researcher and interpreters were made and recorded in written or by a sound recording device. "Content analysis" technique was used for the analysis of the data. The results derived from the findings of the research are covered under the headline "Students, families, schools and measures to be taken." Among the factors affecting the achievement of the students, there are attention of the families, preschool education, adaptation and German level of the families, families and close circles of the students, reading books, watching movies and plays, attending to social activities and success at speaking mother tongue. Among the family related factors affecting the success of the students, profession and education status of the families, speaking German at a good level and adaptation are considered as crucial and attention of the families to education, workload, language problems and shyness are affecting the communication between the families and schools. School and educational system related problems are preschool education, attention paid by the families, discrimination, educational and economic status of families. While it was observed that early orientation are affecting the immigrant students negatively, dropping outs are less than before and male students are standing out on this matter. According to the administrators, teachers, consulate teachers, students and parents among the measures to be taken there should be adaptation and language knowledge of the families, more educational support by both Germand and Turkish governments, more home study by students, late orientation for immigrant students, more understanding approach to immigrant students by administrators and teachers, equal and non discriminative treatment at schools. Key words: Turkish people in Germany, adaptation, integration, academical success, immigrant children, qualitative research