Culturally responsive teaching in social studies education: Interaction with refugee students

Migration because of wars and internal conflicts become an important issue in the world as well as in Turkey in recent years. Education is important in ensuring mutual interpersonal harmony and reducing discrimination and prejudice towards refugees. However, research shows that individuals in countries which accept refugees in their societies face educational inequality. Throughout literature, it is emphasized that the reason for the low academic achievement and motivation of refugee students is to ignore the cultural experiences of the refugee students. In this study, it was aimed to identify the problems encountered in the formation of cultural understanding and interaction in Social Studies courses, including refugee students, to prepare, implement, evaluate and improve the current situation for culturally responsive teaching oriented action plans for the solution of these problems. In this research, action research design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The data collection process took place in two interrelated stages: entry into the field and application process. First of all, the problems encountered in providing cultural interaction with refugee students in the Social Studies course were understood. In the second stage, action plans were prepared on the basis of the agreed problems and the implementation process was started. Data analysis was performed simultaneously with data collection. The data obtained were analyzed inductively by employing NVivo 12 program. As a result of the research, the lack of academic achievement, lack of school-family communication, lack of language, peer bullying against refugee students, lack of empathy in class and lack of teachers' empathy towards the refugee students, and prejudice against the refugee students were some of the findings of the current study. Based on the findings, action plans were prepared and culturally responsive teaching practices were carried out. As a result of the activities that were employed through research process, it was found that the interaction between the students in and outside of the class was improved, the adaptation process in the classroom was accelerated and the participation in the Social Studies course for both refugee students and other students was increased. Keywords: Social studies, Culturally responsive teaching, Action research, Refugee, Interaction.