Training teachers for diversity awareness

Abstract

Despite efforts to integrate refugee children into host country education systems, their low school attachment, poor academic performance, and high drop-out rates remain major policy challenges. Teachers can have important impacts on these student outcomes, yet classroom diversity poses difficulties for teachers who may not always be adequately prepared to address the needs of minority students. Using administrative data and a regression discontinuity approach, we evaluate whether a teacher training program—designed to raise awareness among primary and secondary school teachers in Türkiye based on a cascade-training approach—is effective in improving school outcomes of refugee students. We find that the program almost halves the absenteeism gap between native and refugee students, and its effect persists into the next academic year, albeit fading in size. We also find that the program improves the grades of refugee students in Turkish language and Math subjects, and that there is a positive association between improved attendance and grades. One possible channel through which the effects of the program may operate is a school-wide champion role assumed by trained teachers, which has a broad impact on raising diversity awareness within schools.