Reaping the benefits of cultural diversity
- Culturally diverse schools may constitute natural arenas for training crucial intercultural skills. We hypothesized that a classroom cultural diversity climate fostering contact and cooperation and multiculturalism, but not a climate fostering color-evasion, would be positively related to adolescents’ intercultural competence. Adolescents in North Rhine-Westphalia (N = 631, Mage = 13.69 years, 49% of immigrant background) and Berlin (N = 1,335, Mage = 14.69 years, 52% of immigrant background) in Germany reported their perceptions of the classroom cultural diversity climate and completed quantitative and qualitative measures assessing their intercultural competence. Multilevel structural equation models indicate that contact and cooperation, multiculturalism, and, surprisingly, also color-evasion (as in emphasizing a common humanity), were positively related to the intercultural competence of immigrant and non-immigrant background students. We conclude that all three aspects of the classroom climate are uniquely related to aspects ofCulturally diverse schools may constitute natural arenas for training crucial intercultural skills. We hypothesized that a classroom cultural diversity climate fostering contact and cooperation and multiculturalism, but not a climate fostering color-evasion, would be positively related to adolescents’ intercultural competence. Adolescents in North Rhine-Westphalia (N = 631, Mage = 13.69 years, 49% of immigrant background) and Berlin (N = 1,335, Mage = 14.69 years, 52% of immigrant background) in Germany reported their perceptions of the classroom cultural diversity climate and completed quantitative and qualitative measures assessing their intercultural competence. Multilevel structural equation models indicate that contact and cooperation, multiculturalism, and, surprisingly, also color-evasion (as in emphasizing a common humanity), were positively related to the intercultural competence of immigrant and non-immigrant background students. We conclude that all three aspects of the classroom climate are uniquely related to aspects of adolescents’ intercultural competence and that none of them may be sufficient on their own.…
Author details: | Miriam SchwarzenthalORCiDGND, Maja Katharina SchachnerORCiDGND, Linda P. JuangORCiDGND, Fons J. R. van de VijverORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2617 |
ISSN: | 0046-2772 |
ISSN: | 1099-0992 |
Title of parent work (English): | European journal of social psychology |
Subtitle (English): | Classroom cultural diversity |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Place of publishing: | Hoboken |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/07/24 |
Publication year: | 2020 |
Release date: | 2022/04/07 |
Tag: | color-evasion; contact; intercultural competence; multiculturalism; school climate |
Volume: | 50 |
Issue: | 2 |
Number of pages: | 24 |
First page: | 323 |
Last Page: | 346 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Bildungswissenschaften / Department für Inklusionspädagogik |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 37 Bildung und Erziehung |
License (German): | CC-BY-NC-ND - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell, keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International |