The German teachers perception of Turkish children's problems in the school setting

Abstract

This is a descriptive and explorative study. When in the 1960' s the Turkish people went to Germany to work there, no one thought of the difficulties that could arise through this step. After problems in the school setting, in language learning and in the every-day-life appeared starting from food and eating habits to religion, norm and value differences, people tried to solve these problems. There were a lot of books written on the topic of the Turkish guestworkers in Germany, but little empirical research done. Thus the present investigator decided to get the perceptions of one of the involved groups: The German teachers' perceptions about the behavior of the Turkish children they have in class is explored to find the specific areas of perceived differences. The teachers who have a certain number of Turkish students in their class in the school area of Kiel formed the subject population. This research involved two successive studies. On the first one the teachers were asked about their perceptions on Turkish childrens' shortcomings in terms of their language, individual and social development within the frame determined as the aims of education in Schleswig-Holstein area. The second study explored the perceived differences in language, physical appereance, personality and social development and adjustment problems. The data collection was done by two structured questionnaires that were developed. In the first study each school was contacted and the questionnares were given to the director to be distributed to the teachers, in the second study the process was carried out through the mail. The results are given in percentages and tables of frequency distributions. The main finding was that whereas an overall impairment of the Turkish children was perceived by nearly all of the teachers it was not possible for the teachers to pinpoint this impression down to concrete observable behaviors in most of the areas of perceived shortcomings except for language development.