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We examined whether German adolescents who participated in an adapted 8-week school-based intervention, the Identity Project, reported greater changes in heritage and global identities and perceptions of classroom cultural climate. We used a longitudinal, wait-list control design pooling eight classrooms across the school years of 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. The sample included 195 seventh graders (M-age = 12.35 years, SD =.79, 39% female, 83% of migration background). Findings showed moderate support for more heritage identity exploration and greater perceptions of unequal treatment and critical consciousness climate in the intervention group. There were also important differences across conditions regarding how identity and climate related to adolescent outcomes. We conclude that the Identity Project can be adapted and applied in other cultural contexts such as Germany. It provides a necessary space for adolescents to engage in discussions about diversity, cultural heritage, social inequities, and their relevance to one's identities.
We examined whether German adolescents who participated in an adapted 8-week school-based intervention, the Identity Project, reported greater changes in heritage and global identities and perceptions of classroom cultural climate. We used a longitudinal, wait-list control design pooling eight classrooms across the school years of 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. The sample included 195 seventh graders (M-age = 12.35 years, SD =.79, 39% female, 83% of migration background). Findings showed moderate support for more heritage identity exploration and greater perceptions of unequal treatment and critical consciousness climate in the intervention group. There were also important differences across conditions regarding how identity and climate related to adolescent outcomes. We conclude that the Identity Project can be adapted and applied in other cultural contexts such as Germany. It provides a necessary space for adolescents to engage in discussions about diversity, cultural heritage, social inequities, and their relevance to one's identities.
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 of adolescents’ intercultural competence and that none of them may be sufficient on their own.
Migration is not a new phenomenon. However, recent data indicate that unprecedented numbers of people have experienced forced migration around the world with 51% under the age of 18 years. How can educational policies and practices respond sensitively to increasing cultural and migration-based diversity? The purpose of this special section that includes eight studies is to consider these issues more deeply. As a frame for the special section, we address the main question: What are promotive or protective factors for positive development of children and youth attending culturally diverse school contexts? In the collection of papers, these promotive and protective factors range from peers and families, to teachers, to organisational context and climate. With continued disruptions in children's lives due to a pandemic, climate change, war, conflict and poverty, migration will remain a pressing concern and will continue to transform the student populations in our classrooms and schools for the foreseeable future. The need to address how we can best provide students from diverse backgrounds equitable and supportive education, continues.