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This chapter presents facets of the current challenges relating to policy, leadership and praxis, as perceived by school principals and both Turkish and Syrian teachers working with refugee and Turkish students in Syrian refugee schools in Ankara. Adopting a qualitative methodology, we explore the experiences, challenges and strategies of the educators in these new school types. In order to investigate this this phenomenon, we adopted the post-migration ecology framework proposed by Anderson et al. (2004) and the conceptualization of five dimensions of multicultural education (content integration, knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy and empowering the culture and organization of the school) developed by Banks and Banks (1995). The relevant policy, despite its focus on full integration, is still developing and lack clear technical guidelines for specific issues at school level. The data revealed three themes: perceptions towards the refugees, policy into practice in the schools and the consequent challenges, strategies and needs. Although humanistic ideals are manifest in all the participants’ experience with the new phenomena of refugee education, their needs are multifaceted. They are motivated by a pedagogy of compassion, containment and humanistic universal commitment. The principals employ a style of encouraging social justice and moral leadership, whereas the teachers practise the multicultural pedagogy dimensions with trial and error. Incorporation of Syrian educators and their experience and assistance to the Turkish school staff is also discussed.

Turkey has been hosting the largest Syrian refugee migration in the world since 2011, which has necessitated a continuous change in state-level measures to cater for the deficiencies of a forced displacement ranging from economic to social and educational instruments. Despite constructive national policies and legislation of the Turkish government and financial support, refugee access and enrollment in higher education (HE) stand as an issue for a number of reasons. The chapter aims to highlight opportunities and challenges that Syrian refugee students (SRSs) have been experiencing since their immigration to Turkey and it examines HE policies in socio-economic, cultural and political contexts. The study, while making use of Bronfenbrenner’s (2001) bioecological theory of development, adapts it to the context of refugee students in HE. Discussions are supported by reports, laws and circulars to make note of the main principals of the HE policies of Turkey for SRSs as well as their implications in both Syrian and Turkish contexts. During this process, the international and comparative nature of the study is maintained by referring to similar policies for refugees in other host countries and implications for the international arena.

Turkey hosts around three million Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers, more than any other country in the world. Most of the Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers face poverty-related barriers to education, with parents unable to legally work or meet associated costs, or feeling they have no option but to send their children to work rather than school. According to a UNICEF report (January, 2017), even though there is a 50% increase in school attendance for Syrian refugee children in Turkey since June 2016, more than 40% of them (around 390,000) are still not receiving an education. One of the biggest challenges for the Syrian refugee children who are able to go to school in Turkey is the language barrier. The language of instruction in Turkish public schools is Turkish while majority of the Syrian refugee children grew up learning and speaking Arabic. Furthermore, the refugee children often encounter experiences of discrimination, exclusion and marginalization from the non-refugee peers and teachers who cannot recognize and meet the diverse needs of these children with their lack of teaching experience in the culturally diverse classrooms. This narrative research examines the lived experiences of Syrian refugee children attending a Temporary Education Centre (TEC) in a city located in the north-west of Turkey. Narrative research is a way of inquiring into individual and social dimensions of experience over time through storytelling. It is often employed to illuminate the experiences of marginalized or excluded individuals and communities. Given the influx of refugee children in TECs and schools in Turkey, it is important to provide an in-depth understanding of the refugee children’s lived reality in schools and centres particularly, the factors contributing to their academic success, resilience and psychological well-being, so that future studies will have a basis for further investigations of newcomers.

Acquiring a foreign language may be a lifelong endeavor, and this requires one to approach it from a lifelong learning perspective. However, learners may not always be ready for such an approach. It is important to know where learners stand in their orientations toward learning and consider this when planning educational activities. Therefore, it is necessary to determine language learners’ readiness for lifelong learning (LLL) in order to support their language development. This paper reports the findings of a study conducted to identify the LLL propensities of some Turkish and Emirati university students learning English as a foreign language in their local contexts. The study included 61 Emirati and 47 Turkish students, with a mean age of 19. Data were collected using a research tool with three sections: Demographics, the Lifelong Learning Tendency Scale (LLLTS – developed by Coskun & Demirel (2012)), and a survey with six open-ended questions. Student’s t-test, the Kruskal-Wallis test and the Mann-Whitney U-test were used to compare the quantitative data in terms of the participants’ nationalities, gender and length of study. The results showed that both Turkish and Emirati students had a moderate level of propensity for LLL. However, the Turkish students’ overall LLLTS scores as well as certain sub-skills were found to be higher than those of the Emirati students. Gender was not found to make a significant difference in the students’ LLL orientations, while motivation was found to be lower at a statistically significant level for those learning English for more than a year. Suggestions are offered for the development of language learners’ LLL skills.

The literature shows economics students to be more market oriented than students from other disciplines. A major shortcoming of this work, however, is that it is based on research carried out in the west. The purpose of this paper is to examine the attitudes of Turkish economics students’ towards markets.

The study reported here uses a survey developed by Lephard and Breeden to investigate students’ attitudes towards markets. The survey consists of 11 market-positive statements and 11 market-negative statements. Participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each statement, placed at between 0 and 100 per cent and classified into 11 categories. The survey was administered to economics, physics and mathematics students from different universities. Then, responses of economics students and others are compared.

The results show that Turkish students are less market friendly than their western counterparts. Contrary to the findings of other studies, in Turkey studying economics is found to have no effect on attitudes in this respect.

First, almost all of the other studies in this realm are all based on surveys carried out in the west. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study for other parts of the world. Second, results show that Turkish economics students are less market friendly than their western counterparts, and that studying economics has no significant effect on this. These results are surprising and contrary to the consensus in the literature.

This study examines the educational aspirations of immigrant students, who are descendants of eight different immigrant communities in Germany. First, the article shows that compared to native German students, the educational aspirations of students with migration origin vary substantially. Challenging previous narratives of immigrant optimism and information deficit, the article suggests that the students of Turkish origin develop a conscious appraisal of obtaining an academic high-school qualification (AHSQ), even if they realize they will not be able to receive one by the end of the high-school. The study also shows that the duration of their stay in Germany plays a significant role in attenuating the high educational aspirations of most immigrant communities. However, Turkish students constitute an exception to this finding as they maintain high idealistic aspirations from first- to third-generation. The return migrant students from the former Soviet Union are the only group who report high educational aspirations, when asked about both their idealistic and realistic aspirations. Finally, the findings indicate that the position of the particular immigrant groups within the German social status hierarchy is a strong determinant of the educational aspirations of immigrant students and their parents.

This study aims to discover the general trends, the structural characteristics of the knowledge base, and developments in the field of internationalization of higher education (IHE) in Turkey. In this respect, the studies published in journals indexed by SSCI, SCI-Expanded, ESCI, and AHCI in Web of Science (WoS) between January 1, 1975, and November 20, 2021, were analyzed. The dataset included 260 articles. We administered descriptive analysis reflecting the topographical features and the dynamics of the related literature through Excel and the WoS analysis tools. We conducted bibliometric analyses to shed light on the current view of the literature and reveal the intellectual structure of the knowledge base and topical foci. The volume of the research in the field of IHE in Turkey and their yearly distribution suggests that this area of research is still in its infancy; however, there has been a rapid growth in the number of publications recently. Author co-citation analysis reveals four distinct schools of thought labeled as “Higher Education Policy Studies in EU,” “Global Socio-politics and Economics of IHE,” “Socio-cultural and Psychological Dimensions of Internationalization” and “Language Studies.” Finally, topical foci in the knowledge base emerged as “International Student Mobility,” “Psychological and Cultural Adaptation of International Students,” “Higher Education Policy Reforms,” “International Staff Mobility” and “Migration Related Issues.” The results are discussed with related review studies and suggestions for future research are provided.

Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees of any nation globally, and the influx of Syrian refugees has placed massive strain on the Turkish education system. In response, the Promoting Integration of Syrian Children to the Turkish Education System (PICTES) program was implemented to help strengthen the Turkish public-school system and increase education access for Syrian refugee students. This chapter uses Bacchi’s (2009) method of policy analysis to look deeply at the underlying assumptions in the PICTES program. This analysis reveals that while the PICTES program has made great strides toward helping refugee students gain more long-term and sustainable access to education, it reflects cultural deficit thinking and focuses more on what refugees’ lack and need than on what they already have. The author argues that the PICTES program needs to be revised to change the current deficit approach and emphasize recognizing and leveraging refugees’ cultural wealth.

Turkish food retail in Germany fulfils social, cultural, and economic functions, but is threatened by shifts in demand and competition. The purpose of this paper is to give a holistic, interdisciplinary, and action-oriented view of the challenges and opportunities of Turkish food retail in Germany.

Based on a qualitative study using expert interviews with 18 businesspersons from different parts of the Turkish food supply chain in Germany and a qualitative survey of 349 working Bachelor students of trade, industrial, and logistics management as well as business informatics, this paper takes a value chain approach.

The main opportunities of Turkish food retail in Germany lie in increasing its efficiency, using purchasing associations and brand building, targeting well-funded German consumers, offering fluent Turkish-German customer service and shopping experiences, providing appealing shop locations, designs, and layouts, product range adjustments, and promotions.

This paper is based on a small scale qualitative study as access to Turkish food retail experts is limited. The sample was carefully selected to be a fair representation of the Turkish food supply chain. As for the consumers, only students have been surveyed so far, because they were targeted by the experts interviewed. In order to allow wider generalizations, this sample could be extended.

This study complements and enhances the very limited research on Turkish food retail in Germany. For the first time, the call for a holistic, interdisciplinary, and action-oriented examination of the challenges and opportunities of Turkish food retail in Germany is answered from a value chain perspective.

Refugee students’¹ education is disrupted by multiple spatial and temporal transitions – no matter where they come from, where they go, and what cause their forced migration. The first major disruption occurs with their flight from origin countries due to security or other reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic led to another dramatic disruption with a heightened risk of weakening hard-earned progress. This chapter examines an example of post-migration education opportunities for urban refugee students across two monolingual contexts at two critical junctures from their arrival in the destination countries to the COVID-19 outbreak. It discusses the readiness and responsiveness of Turkish and German education systems by examining the instances and consequences of disruption in refugee students’ education in İstanbul and Hamburg. A multiple case study design with critical policy analysis (CPA) was used. In addition to the available national statistics, empirical data drew on semi-structured in-depth interviews with refugee students and teachers. The background section maps out the trajectory of refugee education with a synthesis of the formal educational policies in Turkey and Germany toward the inclusion of refugee students into public schools. The findings first elaborate on the readiness of the Turkish and German contexts and a scoping review of the literature on the major issues in both settings. The second part explores the responsiveness of both education systems to refugee children’s education during the COVID-19 pandemic in both cases, namely, in İstanbul and Hamburg.