Schooling contexts of refugee and immigrant students in italian elementary schools

This doctoral dissertation has been prepared to contribute to the limited research available on best practices for the integration of refugee and immigrant students. Given the fact that primary school children spend most of their school days with their teachers, this age group of refugee and immigrant students and their teachers were chosen as the research’s sample to seek for the best practices for the integration of service seeking asylum seekers and immigrant children. In this thesis, firstly, non-participant observations were conducted as a case study in Rome, Italy, to examine the needs of refugee and immigrant children in the field of education and integration. According to these observations, refugee and immigrant students are generally adapted well to new learning environments but have difficulty learning Italian. Then, to confront the collected data, the questionnaire was conducted by elementary school teachers in Rome, Italy to contribute their points of view to the study on teaching refugee and immigrant students. Although it was stated that the teachers did not get enough education on multicultural education during their teacher education, that was found out that the teachers were confident enough on their efficient teaching on refugee and immigrant students. Although the same teachers stated that they did not receive sufficient support from the administrative staff of the schools, they were found to be open to implementing new practices to serve refugee and immigrant students. Then the effects and future suggestions were discussed.