Investigation of attitudes of teacher and students towards refugee students in the middle schools

This research was conducted to determine the attitudes of teachers and students towards refugee students in secondary schools. The universe of the research is 3645 teachers working in 97 secondary schools in Gaziantep province Şahinbey district in 2017-2018 academic year and 85518 secondary school students studying in these schools. The sample of the study consists of 814 teachers working in 27 secondary schools in Gaziantep province Şahinbey district selected by simple random random method and 1218 students studying at these schools. In the research, "Refugee Student Attitude Scale" was used for teachers and "Attitude Scale for Refugee Students" was used for students. In the study, frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, independent sample t-test and ANOVA test were used in the analysis of data. The attitudes of the teachers participating in the research towards the refugee students in secondary schools were found to be "good" but not "very good". In addition, it has been determined that teachers approach the refugee students with optimism, are understanding, instead of them try to understand them by putting themselves, and treat them fairly without prejudice. However, it has been determined that the language difference of refugee students is a problem for teachers, this makes it difficult for refugee students to adapt to the classroom and teachers do not consider themselves sufficient in the education of refugee students. It was determined that the attitudes of middle school students participating in the study towards the refugee students in their class were "at a medium level" but not at a "good level". Secondary school students are happy that refugee students learn Turkish, not treating them like a stranger, they help them as a requirement of belonging to the same religion, It has been determined that refugee students are successful in their lessons and they are happy to introduce our country to them. On the other hand, it was revealed that middle school students were not very willing to be friends with refugee students in their future education and training life, at school and outside school, and similarly, they did not want to be in the same group with refugee students in educational activities held in the classroom. Secondary school students' attitudes towards refugee students in their independent variables used in the research; It was determined that there were significant differences by gender, there were no significant differences by grade level, and there were significant differences according to the status of being a refugee or not.