Abstract
Social behavior, defined as positive attitudes and behaviors exhibited by the individual towards the environment during the socialization process, is a phenomenon that includes many skills ranging from communication to recognition of the individual's own interests and abilities and to the availability of appropriate environments. It is necessary to acquire some social skills for children have a healty psicosocial process and for shape social skills. While social skills are acquired and developed within the social development process, they are influenced by many factors such as family, school and peer environment, cultural norms and values. Peer interaction is effective in developing and using social skills particularly in childhood. It is aimed to evaluate the social skills of refugee children undergoing cultural change via this research. The main reason for applying the views of the peers of the refugee children during this evaluation is that the primary socialization environment for the children is the school. Based on this aim, the data were collected by the questionnaire that consisting of 42 items and consisting of skills included in social skills lists. At the end of this research, it is seemed that refugee children are more likely to have higher levels of skills, such as coping with emotions, alternative to aggression, coping with stress and planning, and less likely to have more complex social skills, while some refugee children are more likely to have aggressive and aggressive attitudes. In addition, the peer opinions of students who are studying at Saadet Güney Imam Hatip Secondary School are more positive than the students in Aksaray Secondary School. In the relevant literature, it is thought that the study will contribute to the field in this respect, as there is no research on the evaluation of the social skills or behaviour of the refugee children according to the views of their peers.
Summary
Social skills are categorized in different ways (Bacanlı, 2014, 56-66). Goldstein et al., who were taken as the main reference in the present study of ours, examined social skills in six groups as basic, advanced, coping with emotions, alternative to aggression, coping with stress, and planning. These groups cover upper-level social skills like discovering abilities and determining goals starting with simple skills like greeting and introducing oneself. A great number of social skills are acquired by observing, imitation and feedback. For this reason; in learning social skills, family, peers, school environment, the norms of the society and the cultural values, which make up the social environment, are important (Michelson et al., 1983, 3, Kumru, Carlo and Edwards, 2004, 112-113). In this context, it is predicted that refugee children, who are exposed to changes in their social environments and cultural lives may face orientation problems at this point, which might be an obstacle for the development of their social skills. Based on this, in this study, the social skills of refugee children were asked to be assessed by their peers. Since the issue of orientation with the society for the refugee children will be possible only when they are accepted by their peers and when they learn certain cultural values, norms and behaviors, this study is important. In addition, the fact that the number of refugee children is extremely high in our country increases the importance of the issue.
In this study, in which the social skills of the refugee children, who are educated at public schools, were evaluated by their peers, the method was preferred as the descriptive survey method. The answers for the following questions were sought in the present study:
1. How are the social skill competences of refugee children according to the opinions of their peers?
2. To what extent have the skills of refugee children developed in the sub-groups of social skills according to their peers?
3. Is there a significant relation between the independent variables and the opinions of the peers on the social skills of refugee children?
4. Is there a relation between the independent variables and the opinions of the peers on the skills of the refugee children in the subgroups, which make up the social skills of refugee children?
The universe of the study consists of 35 schools in Aksaray where refugee students are educated. Among these schools, Aksaray Secondary School and Saadet Güney Imam Hatip Secondary School, which were determined to meet the layer criteria, were selected as the sampling. Sampling size is consisted of 318 students.
The “Evaluation Survey of the Social Skills of Refugee Children”, which was used in the study, was developed by the author of the present study. Since it was determined in the literature review that there were no questionnaires or scales that could be used to determine the opinions of peers, the need emerged to develop a new questionnaire. The Social Skills List, which was prepared by Goldstein et al. (1981, narrated by Bacanlı, 2014, 78-79), was taken as the basis in creating the questionnaire items. The questionnaire consists of 42-items. The SPSS program was made use of in processing and evaluating the data; and the findings were determined in this way.
As a result of the evaluation of the findings, it may be argued that peers found the social skills of refugee students to be at a moderate level. Because, when the averages of the items were examined, it was determined that there were 6 items that had an average below 3 in the full questionnaire that had 42 items. One of these items was the praise-compliment, which is one of the initial social skills. The other four items were about physical violence, avoidance of verbal arguments, and anger control. Another item that had a value that was below the average was the ability in deciding skills, and participating in activities related to them. There were only two items in the questionnaire that had an average of over 4 points. The peers considered refugee children to be adequate in establishing relations and sharing-solidarity.
It was determined that the group that was considered to be the most inadequate for refugee children by their peers on the basis of item average was the coping with stress skill followed by planning skills among the questionnaire items.
It was determined that there were no significant differences between the genders, ages, grades, schools and the classrooms, which peers shared with refugee children, and the social skills of the refugee children according to their peers. However, a significant relation was detected between the six sub-groups, which made up the social skills, and the school where refugee students were educated. The opinions of the students in Saadet Güney Imam Hatip Secondary School were found to be more positive on the social skills of their refugee peers. It is estimated that this might be associated with the school culture.
Based on the abovementioned results, it may be recommended to provide language and orientation education particularly to children who start their migration processes in addition to psychosocial support for them. In this way, it is considered that the aggressive behaviors seen in children, and the disciplinary problems caused by them at schools might be decreased.
Primary Language | Turkish |
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Journal Section | Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | June 30, 2019 |
Published in Issue | Year 2019 Volume: 18 Issue: 35 |