Abstract
Greek Reception Facilities for Refugee Education (RFREs) operated for the first time in Greece during the school year 2016-2017, as a result of the need of refugee children to participate in formal education either in the refugee reception centers or in school units, with the purpose of their educational integration. The aim of this study is to examine the process and criteria with which teachers in RFREs were chosen and the training they received. The research participants were seven teachers and one Refugee Education Coordinator (REC) in the cities of Volos and Larisa, Greece. Through semi-structured interviews, the participants expressed the challenges they faced which resulted from receiving insufficient training in teaching refugee children. Based on the study findings, it can be concluded that the lack of training of teachers working in RFREs causes multiple problems, which impede educational procedures. It was found that the teachers were not able to successfully approach their refugee students so as to create the prerequisites for the children to be smoothly integrated into the Greek educational system. Lack of skills for students’ psychological support and communication difficulties due to lack of a language of mediation also causes many issues which obstruct the educational process.
Highlights
More and more people nowadays cross borders looking for peace, security or a better standard of living
The present study is a case study, as it focuses on examining the attitudes of a number of teachers who were employed in RFREs in primary and secondary schools in the cities of Volos and Larisa, Greece, during the school year 2016-2017
Regarding the first research question that concerned the RFRE teachers’ previous education and training in the field of intercultural education, the teaching of their subject to vulnerable groups and if this was taken into account for their employment in RFREs, it was found that the studies of the participants were not connected to intercultural education nor to the teaching of their subject to vulnerable groups
Summary
More and more people nowadays cross borders looking for peace, security or a better standard of living. The number of displaced people worldwide in 2015 was 65.3 million, the largest number recorded ever since the end of World War II and it is believed to have reached 68.5 million (UNHCR, 2018). Immigration is a result of a combination of factors (financial, environmental, political and social) either in the country of origin or in the host country. The European Union has long been considered a desired immigrant/refugee destination, due to its financial and political stability (Statistics for Migration, 2017). The various wars in different parts of the world, the entrance of ISIS and the difficult conditions in refugee camps in their neighboring countries made a lot of people want to reach Europe (Palmén, 2015). The influx of refugees that followed has caused a so-called “refugee crisis” (Ceccarelli, 2016) with more than one million asylum seekers and immigrants entering Europe
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