In recent years, the number of refugees in Turkey has severely increased because of the civil war in Syria. Almost 3,500,000 people (more than half of them are children) have come to Turkey since 2011. Refugee children have participated in the school life just after they came to Turkey. They have gone to school as other children at their ages. In first years, they were allowed to go to schools in refugee camps in border cities. However, after first two years, refugee families have migrated to other cities in Turkey and now, almost every state school in Turkey have several refugee students. The level of those children may be different. Some of the students went to schools in Syria and they know the numbers and Arabic letters. On the other hand, there are many children have never been in a school because of the war. Those children are accepted to Turkish schools with their ages primarily. Sometimes, some exams can be conducted to determine their levels, but some problems can be arisen if the results of these exams are only considered during placement. For example, a 12-year-old boy may not know even how to read in his own language but he cannot go to primary school with 6-year-old children. Especially in elementary schools, the teachers have serious troubles with this multicultural classes. Refugee children lose their motivation when they do not understand. If the teacher especially spend extra time for refugee children, the native students can be behind the schedule. After a while, the refugee students become more silent or rebel against the teachers and classmates, or they do not come to schools anymore. This is a potential reason for increase of crime rate in next ten years. The idea and the product of it have been developed by the project theoretically team. We wanted that book to become a wider teaching and learning material. We always tried to look innovative but also wanted to make use of valuable experiences of European countries. So that became such a project: With the help of the good practices report prepared by consortium, we will produce new teaching materials including that workbook for all middle school levels. Main principal of these materials will be more mathematics, less native language. Even if, we will use minimal words, its verbal parts will be in multilanguage (Turkish, Arabic and English) and this book will also become a source for refugee families. We will prepare a booklet on how to use these sources and how to contribute them and further to that we will make all materials online and open source. These materials will be parallel to the national training program so, at the end of the semester, all of the students could learn the same subjects but in different levels. Refugee students will become more self-confident and more enthusiastic to participate in classes. Classroom management will be easier and refugee parents will be able to get involve in education process of their children. In long term, from a macro perspective, these children and their families will become socially included individuals and they can contribute to formation of public order.
Since 2010, the numbers of refugees, immigrant and asylum seekers have been increasing exponentially all around the world. As of 2018, there are 4.391.419 refugees, 1.299.246 asylum seekers and 2.804.962 internally displaced people in EU. Turkey has also been affected by these global human movements and the situation has been worsening since the civil war in Syria. People from several countries arrived in Turkey and their population is more than 3.5 million. The majority of refugees consist of children in school-age and women which means that millions of refugee children (RC) must be educated in national education system. Therefore, integration of RC into school life has become top priority which is not manageable at national level and requires transnational cooperation. In national education systems, RC get education in combined classes which contain 10%-20% RC and 80%-90% native children. As native pupils, RC start to new semester enthusiastically. But, they lose their concentration and motivation through semester due to lack of effective communication with their teachers and native students. They do not participate in lessons until they learn native language. Learning new language requires time. During this time period, RC are not able to follow and understand courses such as math and science. They cannot ask questions, explain their needs nor express themselves. Teachers do not have enough time to respond their special needs. Hence, RC choose to isolate themselves. This isolation process leads to problems such as exclusion by the native students, fights, hatefulness against others, attendance problems, dropping out school, taking part in gangs and finally racism. To be integrated, RC should take part in class and feel that they can be successful like native students. A solution must promote and improve the sense of self-sufficiency of RC and their confidence to national education system. Thus, the solution must support RC for systematic successive achievements and these motivation-generating achievements should proceed hand in hand with learning language. The objective of ULM project is to propose such a solution. To keep RC active and motivated in the classes, ULM project formulated an innovative method of teaching which uses the universal language of math instead of national language of host country. RC can learn math in combined classes while they are learning native language. The target groups are RC under the age of 15, their parents and teachers. They are supported via necessary supplementary materials which present math topics with maximum mathematical expression and minimum verbal expression. The ULM project consists of three phases represented by three Intellectual Outputs. Within the framework of these IOs, all objectives of the ULM project were met. ULM project conducted in-depth research on the situation of RC in Turkey, Italy and Germany, and comprehensive survey in Turkey to reveal the real-life challenges in integration of RC to the school life. The results were documented in a report which covers data, statistics, and existing approaches (examples of good practice) on school life of RC from the perception of major refugee receiver countries (Turkey, Italy and Germany). The survey work provided precious insight into the school life of RC. The report was disseminated to target groups and stakeholders which in turn raised the awareness of the public about the educational problems of RC. Thus, the ULM project resulted in valuable input for further creation of successful policy and projects. ULM project produced informative booklets about the national education systems of Turkey, Germany and Italy. RC and their parents can discover all necessary information about the national education system (their rights, responsibilities, opportunities, etc.) and the curriculum. ULM project created math activity books which were developed especially for RC in accordance with four classes of middle school math curriculums. To overcome the language barrier (RC faced with), these books were employed the method of teaching which used the universal language of math and can be easily followed by the RC who are not good at national language. Therefore, RC can learn math in classes together with national students while they are learning national language. Besides, teachers are supported via supplementary learning materials. ULM project created an online platform (math room) for math education. To make the learning of math more enjoyable, math room offers online exercises for RC. On ULM online platform, separate modules have been prepared to direct students from partner countries to the relevant grade level. Besides, a universal content module has been added to the platform, where any student from any part of the world can access a comprehensive curriculum at the beginner level, no matter where they are connected from. Math room provides flexible study method to refugee students.