Discussion Prompt
Choose a claim that affects the field of education that is emerging in relation to your topic of interest – using the Claim Acceptability criteria (Figure 2.3) in Chapter 2 of The literature review: Six steps to success, discuss your reasons to take a claim as an acceptable assertion.
Here is the post.
The argument of discovery’s “function is to discuss and explain what is known about the subject in question” (Machi, 2008, p.40). In my case the subject is refugee children education in Turkey. When building the argument of discovery of my subject, data needs to be gathered, analyzed, and findings need to be developed. (Machi, 2008, p.40) The difficulty in developing discovery would be not knowing the “current state of the knowledge related to the subject” (Machi, 2008, p.40). This requires collaborative work with the instructor and the librarian to find the best resources to reach the current and quality literature (Luker, 2008). The developing advocacy requires to “analyze and critique the knowledge gained from the discovery argument” (Machi, 2008, p.40). The good example would be that after developing the discovery argument of refugee children education in Turkey, my advocacy argument must be used to list the factors in the refugee children education in Turkey. These factors should be compared to UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals 4 expected factors to find out if the listed factors meet the inclusion and equity educational needs of refugee children in Turkey.
My initial claim was that effectiveness of in-service teacher education is an important factor to promote inclusivity and equity in refugee children education in Turkey. This is an accepted fact because teachers “are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the faith of the earth”. -Helen Caldicott (Habib, 2017, p.530) Teachers help all the students in the class to “create the image of their own by understanding the problems of the students”, and teachers are to control the class environment while being fair to all students (Habib, 2017, p.530).
However, during the search of the literature related to the effectiveness of in-service teacher education in refugee children education in Turkey, I noticed that I don't have sufficient evidence to support my claim. “Teacher education in many countries has recently come under strong public criticism. However, only little research exists in this field” (Blomeke, 2008, p.719).
This being the reason, I now have the claim of ‘there are factors impacting inclusivity and equity in refugee education in Turkey’, and I will continue my search to review literature to find out what these factors are. This claim would be considered a fact type of claim. Because, I will have to justify this claim by factual evidence and evidence of truth that I will gather from the current literature. I recognize the effectiveness of teacher education would be one of the factors along with many others.
My claim is an acceptable claim. It is understandable to the point that is specified to refugee children education and it is clearly stated as well. It is also on point that refugee education has been an ongoing worldwide issue last decade (UNHCR, 2022, n.p.). There is a compelling reason which is that refugee children need inclusive and equitable education in order to become “highly skilled” (UNESCO, 2016, n.p.) and “happy” individuals (UNESCO, 2016) as all students do. The educational needs of refugee children on inclusivity and equity level might be different then local children. There is evidence available to justify the claim and the best example would be lack of language acquisition. Dursun, et al. (2020) indicates as a result of his study that “the most basic problem experienced by foreign students is the language problem. Students had difficulty in understanding their environment because of this problem and this situation brought problems of adaptation to school, the teacher and classmates” (Dursun, 2020, p.140). The majority of refugee children speak and write in Arabic while Turkish educational and official languages are in Turkish. So, the impacting factors clearly should be identified in order to meet the inclusive and equitable needs of refugee children education in Turkey.
The resources what have been helpful to me so far in learning how to produce a literature review are:
- Luker, K. (2008). Salsa dancing into the social sciences: Research in an age of info-glut. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapter 5: Reviewing the Literature (pp. 76-98)
- Machi, L. A., & McEvoy, B. T. (2016). The literature review: Six steps to success. Vancouver, B.C.: Langara College. Introduction: Doing and producing a literature review.
- Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. ISBN: 9780133550337
The all three modules’ presentations that are provided in the module overview and learning materials section of the class have been helpful as well.
References
Blömeke, S., Felbrich, A., Müller, C., Kaiser, G., & Lehmann, R. (2008). Effectiveness of teacher education. ZDM, 40(5), 719-734.
Dursun, F., & Sevim, Ö. M. (2022). Receiving Education in a Different Country: Challenges Encountered by Foreign Students and Proposed Solutions. Acta Educationis Generalis, 12(2), 140-162.
Habib, H. (2017). A study of teacher effectiveness and its importance. National Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development, 2(3), 530-532.
Machi, L. A., & McEvoy, B. T. (2016). The literature review: Six steps to success. Vancouver, B.C.: Langara College. Introduction: Doing and producing a literature review.
UNESCO (2016). Education for people and planet: Creating sustainable futures for all. Global Education Monitoring Report. Paris: UNESCO.
UNHCR. (2022). Türkiye. Global Focus. Retrieved October 22, 2022
One of the difficulties in forming my arguments is that, as I take a step back and look at the research I have found, I think I may need to reevaluate my interest statement. I originally wanted to examine how policy supports linguistically diverse students (migrants, immigrants, etc.) in Japan. However, examing the literature together, a larger theme I am seeing is the role of teachers and how they support linguistically diverse students. Although there is a crossover between policy and teacher training, the literature suggests that teachers have a bigger impact on supporting these students than policy. For example, I have found that teachers working with linguistically diverse students in Japan feel overburdened, over-relied upon, undervalued, stigmatized, and voiceless in the decision-making process (Gordon, 2006; Ishida et al., 2016; Nguyen, 2018; Saki, 2021). So, I am wondering if, now that my literature is coming together, there is a renewed need to go back and reevaluate my interest statement.
One claim I made is that language ability is the most imperative factor in educating linguistically diverse students. This claim is a claim of worth as it suggests that language ability has more merit than other abilities. To me, this claim is on point, since language ability is absolutely a barrier for linguistically diverse students. I believe it strengthens my review as it gives an end by which to measure the success of linguistically diverse students. The claim is simple and straightforward with no academic or hard-to-understand concepts.
Although the textbook has been my primary source of information, I did find the examples on this blog
Links to an external site. from Stellenbosch University useful.
Interest Statement (for reference)
The subject of my review is to examine what the existing literature says regarding whether linguistically diverse students (L2) in Japan believe that national policy impacts their integration into a monolingual society (L1). This review aims to identify how the national policy concerning linguistically diverse students is implemented. Considering global immigration trends, Japan is a case study to examine the effects of inclusive policies regarding the integration of language minority students into monolingual societies.
References
Ishida, K., Nakamuro, M., Takenaka, A. (2016) The Academic Achievement of Immigrant Children in Japan: An Empirical Analysis of the Assimilation Hypothesis, Educational Studies in Japan, 10, 93-107, https://doi.org/10.7571/esjkyoiku.10.93
Links to an external site.Gordon, J. (2006). Assigned to the margins: Teachers for minority and immigrant communities in Japan. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(7), 766–776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.028
Links to an external site.Machi, L. A., & McEvoy, B. T. (2016). The literature review: Six steps to success. Vancouver, B.C.: Langara College
Moll-Willard, E. (2019, February 28). Slaying the (literature review) beast: Part 2. Stellenbosch University Library Research News. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://blogs.sun.ac.za/libraryresearchnews/2019/02/28/slaying-the-literature-review-beast-part-2/
Links to an external site.Nguyen, T. T. (2018) Problems of language education for immigrant children from the supporters' point of view: The case of Hyogo, Japan. Research Center for Promoting Intercultural Studies, Kobe University Annual Research Report 2017, 47-53. https://doi.org/10.24546/81010566
Links to an external site.Saki, A. M. (2021) Stories of deficiency, disparity, and disconnect: Challenges of supporting language minority students in Japan. Bulletin of Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Art, 38. 158-183. doi:10.15020/0000218
