Refugee Students' Perspectives on Science Lessons

Abstract

This study aims to determine the opinions of Syrian students who have migrated to Turkey regarding science subjects. The present study is a non-experimental descriptive design accompanied by qualitative data collection and analysis procedure. This study was conducted with 87 (41 female, 46 male) Syrian students, who are learning Turkish in the Turkish Teaching Center (TÖMER) in a big city located in the southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey. A questionnaire with two sections developed by the researchers was used for data collection. In the first section of the questionnaire, there are 6 questions related to the demographic features of the participants. In the second section, there are five open-ended questions, which aimed at determining the attitudes of the participants towards science. Each of these five open-ended questions was designed as a writing activity. Content analysis technique was used to analyze the data obtained from the open-ended questions. At the end of the study, refugee students stated that they liked biology the most and least enjoyed the physics lesson because it was easy in science lessons and because it studied living things. Results indicated that science does indeed have an impact on their lives, and they provided the following statements as their reasons. They stated that science is more beneficial for humanity and has a significant influence on our lives.