The Education of Refugee Children with Disabilities in the Turkish Context

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Embodied Histories, Collective Futures: Reframing Disability and Education in the Global South

Abstract

We examine the current policies and practices to understand the educational experiences of refugee children with disabilities in Türkiye. Hosting approximately 3.6 million refugees, Türkiye has not had existing policies and practices to respond to the intersecting needs of refugee students with disabilities in inclusive ways. Thus, we review literature, NGO reports, and policy documents that explore the experiences of refugee children with disabilities and policies and practices related to their education in Türkiye. We use Disability Critical Race Theory tenets to analyze current research and information available in different venues. We identified a few sources focusing on the perspectives of educators and families of refugee children with disabilities, but the voices of the children themselves were largely absent.

Authors

• Sultan Kilinc, Syracuse University

• Elif Karsli-Calamak, University of South Carolina