Educational Integration of Refugees - A Classroom ..
Educational Integration of Refugees - A Classroom Approach
Start date: Sep 1, 2016,
End date: Aug 31, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
The European Union has been experiencing an unprecedented refugee crisis. Refugees who have found homes in the member states are now entering the education system. There is an urgent need to ensure that these students find a place in that system both to satisfy their own educational needs but also to help them integrate successfully into their host countries. Only through this integration can we guard against social exclusion, racism and radicalization. At the front of this endeavor are the classroom teachers who work with refugees either in stand alone groups or within multicultural classes. These teachers are rarely trained to work with refugees but must acquire the skills, competences, tools and confidence to work with these new students. Our project is about exploring best practice in this area, exchanging teaching methods and developing techniques and tools to help teachers who face this new challenge. The presence of refugees in the classroom changes the dynamic of the learning environment, issues such as language difficulties, past traumatic experiences, their interaction with other students, the need to respect their cultural values while at the same time helping them to integrate successfully into their new environment presents a learning curve not just for the students but for their teachers as well.Working together, we can find a strong framework to support teachers to become more successful in multicultural classrooms, to provide better support structures in schools to both teachers and students where refugees are present, and to make those involved in educational management at all levels more aware of the needs and challenges associated with the multicultural classroom environment.This project has 5 partner institutes, all with experience of working with minority groups and disadvantaged students. Partners in Turkey, Germany and Italy are very much at the coalface of the migrant crisis, whil partners in Ireland and Romania have significant experience of working with minorities and disadvantaged students.In order to approach this issue in a structured form we intend to: 1) Listen to the needs, concerns, difficulties encountered and general opinions of refugees and asylum seekers currently in our institutes. 2) Examine strategies currently in place in each institute to support Refugees/asylum seekers to integrate successfully into the classroom and progress successfully along the learning pathway. 3) Adopt best practice from each institute and adapt these practices for use in each individual school/college. 4) Create new approaches/strategies to help refugees/asylum seekers to integrate successfully into the European Educational system. 5) Examine progression routes open to refugees. 6) Disseminate the project learning to as wide an educational audience as possible. In doing this we plan to maintain a clear focus on the work of the teacher in the classroom and how the teacher can be empowered to better assist students who are refugees/asylum seekers. Only through the empowerment of teachers in this area can we hope to truly enhance the individual students learning experience. To achieve this we plan to have 4 short term joint staff training events. The first of these will take place at the German institutions working with refugees and migrants. The participants will take part in classes and gain an understanding of the challenges presented by these students and some of the methods being employed to meet these challenges. They will have an opportunity to talk directly to refugees and their parents and will record the challenges refugees face on their educational pathway. The second training event will be in Romania and will include a workshop on inclusive methods used in class. Participants will meet mediators, The Inspector for National Minorities and will be actively involved in classes where children from minority groups are being educated. Teachers will have the opportunity to discuss which methods being employed in the classrooms might also be applied to refugee students. The third training event will include additional workshop and brainstorming sessions on innovative teaching methods for refugees in class. All the participants will visit schools working with refuges and examine the challenges and solutions being employed to help with their educational needs. During the final training event participants will see examples of where best practice from the project is being used in class with refugees and will take classes themselves using methods explored during the project. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the results of this and refine the teaching methods used.In order to capture the learning from the project and disseminate examples of best practice and innovative teaching methods for working with refugees a website with project documentation, video footage and a book entitled "Educational Integration of Refugees - A Classroom Approach" will be produced.
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