Impact of Psychoeducation Program on Turkish Students' Negative Attitudes Towards Refugee Peers

About 26% of the Syrian population in Turkey is made up of school-age children. In the 2017–2018 academic year, 608,000 Syrian students enrolled in the education system, and 50% attended temporary education centers established for only Syrian students, while the other half attended public schools with their Turkish peers. One of the main factors that complicate the adaptation process of Syrian refugee students who have come to a different culture and have been placed in a foreign education system is the discriminatory attitudes from the locals’ prejudices. Thus, in this study, a five-week psychoeducation program was developed and implemented by the researchers to help make Turkish students better acquainted with their refugee schoolmates, raise awareness of their prejudices, and also shed the negative attitudes to facilitate the adaptation of refugee students. At the end of the study, it was observed that the 5-week psychoeducation program effectively reduced Turkish students’ prejudices towards their Syrian schoolmates and helped them develop positive attitudes towards them. It was also concluded that these positive attitudes continued within the time frame of the 6-week follow-up process.