The psycho-social needs of displaced Syrian youth in Turkish schools: A qualitative study

Abstract

This study investigates major challenges encountered by Syrian refugee youth in public high schools in Turkey, focusing on three sources of assessment: the refugee students themselves and their parents and educators. Based on qualitative interpretive research methodology, twenty-three individual semi-structured interviews were conducted. The study simultaneously hears the voices of the Syrian refugee students as well as those of their parents, teachers, and principals. Making friends among Turkish peers, social integration in school and the host society, discrimination, feeling lonely or even depressed, and other displacement problems are the crucial issues identified by this study. While most of the teachers and principals interviewed focused more on academic problems as the main reason for the deterioration of the majority of Syrian youth’s education, refugee students and their parents claimed that the psycho-social challenges are more difficult and thus problematic.

Keywords: Acculturation, Psycho-social needs, Refugee education, Syrian students.