Drama in ELT for refugee and migrant pre-service EFL teachers
Religious and cultural challenges
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/rx4rje98Keywords:
Syrian Refugees, Palestinian Refugees, Immigrant Education, Drama in ELT, Trauma-informed PedagogyAbstract
Forced migration has placed growing numbers of Syrian and Palestinian students in Turkish higher education, yet drama-based pedagogy—despite its recognized psychosocial benefits—remains poorly understood as a potential site of religious and cultural tension for these students. This study explores the classroom dynamics of Syrian and Palestinian female migrant/refugee students enrolled in a Drama in an ELT course within an English Language Teaching Program at a Turkish public university. Data were collected over a 4-week period through participant observation, semistructured in-depth interviews, and document analysis and were analyzed using thematic analysis. Sharing similar sociocultural characteristics—being Muslim, female, and war-displaced students—the two groups revealed strikingly different academic performances and social behaviors. The Palestinian students were highly successful, with active participation and confident self-expression, while the Syrian students reported academic difficulties, social withdrawal, and embodied vulnerability. The data were interpreted through the lens of cultural capital, rooted in a collective tradition of education-as-resistance. These findings suggest that one-size-fits-all approaches are inadequate in migrant/refugee education and point to the need for trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and differentiated pedagogies in language teacher education programs that serve religiously and culturally diverse student populations.
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