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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.

Migration to Sweden dramatically increased in 2015 and challenged the reception system at all levels and societal institutions, one of which was the school. As a response to the lack of a comprehensive educational strategy for newly arrived students, new regulations were passed in January 2016, the purpose of which was to guarantee equity and equality in education for all students, irrespective of their background. The regulations make demands on local politicians and the school leaders to adjust the reception, organization and teaching to support the newly arrived students’ learning. The purpose of this paper is to explore school leadership practices in turbulent times.

The study is situated in the field of post-migration ecology, as newly arrived students move from pre-migration to transmigration to post-migration contexts, the latter for this paper’s interest, when they arrive to their new schools. Seven principals in a transit municipality for migrants were interviewed to obtain a picture of how they are prepared for diversity in leadership and how policy and practice coincide.

The study reveals how policy and practice coincide due to a lack of intercultural and bilingual competences among the staff. The principal’s responsibility for a school structure and culture that support newly arrived students’ learning raises new demands on how principals are trained for diversity.

The study is a contribution to the little-researched field concerning school leadership and newly arrived students which raises new demands regarding how principals are trained for diversity.

This research explores the perceptions and practice of principals in schools integrating migrant and refugee children into the Israeli formal education system. The aim is to offer theoretical and methodological insights to the discourse on educational leadership.

This qualitative (phenomenological) study used semi-structured interviews to attain a deeper understanding of the experiences of school principals as culturally relevant educational leaders.

The study corroborates previous findings regarding: the need for a holistic multidimensional approach; the focus on language and communication; and the complexities and dilemmas involved in the practice of educational leadership. The study analysis revealed three central dilemmas: applying equal-opportunity and cultural diversity policies; schools as protected spaces and serving the social reality beyond the school; and full assimilation and recognition of specific cultural identity.

The research was conducted in a small number of schools and only with principals. A follow-up study could also include teachers, officials and representatives of the various organizations working with the migrants and refugees.

Beyond financial resources, school leaders need professional (culturally responsive) guidance to support the multifaceted and complex needs of students, in part by being adaptable and flexible, and aware of the aims and practice of education for an unknown future.

The originality-value of the present study is threefold: it explores school principals in a relatively unexplored context (the Israeli formal education system); it applies two models for organizing and analyzing research findings; and it contributes new insights on the dilemmatic nature of educational leadership.

In 2015, there was great refugee migration towards and within Europe. Sweden was no exception. The unprecedented increase in asylum-seekers challenged the reception system at all levels including schools. This chapter, based on two studies, focuses on principals and their mission to adjust their schools in order to fulfil their responsibilities concerning newly arrived students’ education during that period. The number of newly arrived students the principals received ranged from a few students over a period of months to a constant influx of 60 and 150 in total. But the reaction among the principals and staff wasn’t necessarily related to the number of students in question. More telling was the school’s history, the principal’s leadership and the school’s experience in matters of diversity important. The way the principals managed the situation had an impact on how the situation developed. The findings also revealed problematic attitudes toward the ‘other’ among educators, attitudes that conflict with the school’s democratic mission. The reception of newly arrived students is a matter of a joint responsibility at all levels to guarantee equal education for all students, irrespective of their background.

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.

In this chapter, we share narratives from our personal experiences with a shared focus on the relationships between personal identities and family language. The acquisition of a family language is said to be accompanied by a specific ‘intercultural burden’ (Kagan 2012), which is manifested at the intersection of different influences and psychological tensions. This psychosocial and cultural reality has the potential for the development of a true intercultural identity that brings together contradictions and conflicts of inherited cultural differences. Here, through a prism of three personal narratives, we create a series of questions and reflections in relation to the family language. The three voices are articulated through three auto-ethnographic accounts of individuals – two linguists and a theatre scholar who are both personally and professionally invested in the topic of post-migration. The common thread of the three narratives is the experience of Serbian as the first language. As an aspect of personal identity, the idealised concept of family language affects one's identity and makes a decisive impact on investment and potentially life-defining decisions.