Study title

The data was collected in May 2017 visits to a private school and a learning centre Valley in Lebanon serving deprived communities and receiving Syrian refugee children in the Bekaa. The data consists of transcripts of interviews carried out with 34 Lebanese and Syrian refugee Year 6 students and two Year 7 students. The interviews were carried out in English and Arabic dialect (Lebanese and Syrian). The data was collected following the ethical guidelines of the University of Oxford and the Funder. Interviews took place on a one-to-one basis, in pairs of students and in groups and aimed to identify particular challenges students faced when solving the questions.Lebanon has absorbed over half a million registered school-aged Syrian refugees in its unequipped state schools since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011; however, the foreign language of instruction of maths and science has disengaged young Syrian migrants, hampering their progression. The poor proficiency of Syrian migrants in English or French, the media of maths and science instruction in Lebanon, has pushed many to drop out from schools and join the labour force at a very young age. Indeed, the foreign language of maths and science instruction is already controversial in Lebanon as it also marginalises underprivileged Lebanese youth and incites many to leave school before completing compulsory education. In this project, I will collaborate with two Lebanese NGOs, Lebanese Alternative Learning (LAL) and Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT)-Lebanon, who work directly with Syrian refugees in state schools to provide interactive tasks in maths and science in three languages (English, French and Arabic) through an existing online platform called Tabshoura. I will engage in knowledge exchange with both NGOs by applying a framework based on my DPhil and more recent research to evaluate the quality of translation and design of existing Year 6 to 9 science tasks and offer guidance for material...