Authors
Background
Schools are a fundamental socialization context for adolescents’ development, and today’s schools are becoming ethnically and culturally more diverse due to international migration. A growing literature has posited that schools promoting a cultural diversity climate based on equality-inclusion and cultural pluralism approaches might enhance positive interactions and reduce negative experiences among ethnic minority and majority adolescents. In this regard, the present study aimed to disentangle the longitudinal associations of adolescents’ perceptions of equality-inclusion (i.e., perceived equal treatment by teachers, perceived support for contact and cooperation by teachers) and cultural pluralism (i.e., perceived interest of teachers in children’s cultural background) approaches with their positive and negative intergroup contact in schools.
Method
Participants were 984 adolescents (Mage=14.66, 62.7% female, 24.8% ethnic minority) attending high schools in the North-East of Italy involved in a three-wave longitudinal study with six months intervals (T1: May 2019, T2: November 2019, T3: May 2020). Three subscales of the Classroom Cultural Diversity Climate Scale were used to measure adolescents’ perceptions regarding equal treatment by teachers, support for contact and cooperation by teachers (i.e., the dimensions of equality-inclusion approach) as well as the interest of teachers in children’s cultural background (i.e., dimension of cultural pluralism approach). Adolescents’ positive and negative intergroup contact at school was assessed through the Intergroup Contact Interactions Scale. A cross-lagged panel model was estimated in Mplus.
Results
Results demonstrated that perceived equal treatment by teachers was directly related to increased positive and decreased negative contact over time. However, perceived support for contact and cooperation and perceived interest of teachers in children’s cultural backgrounds were not related to either positive or negative contact over time. Furthermore, the test of indirect effects indicated that equal treatment by teachers was related to a decrease in negative intergroup contact not only directly but also indirectly through the mediation of positive contact. That is, the more adolescents perceived their teachers treating all students equally, the more they experienced positive contact over time, and, in turn, the less they experienced negative contact at a later time point. Finally, multi-group analyses demonstrated that these results were replicated across ethnic minority and majority adolescents.
Conclusion
Overall, this longitudinal study highlighted the vital role that a school context endorsing fairness and equal treatment of students could play in creating a school climate characterized by harmonious relationships among adolescents from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Considering that most teachers are still in need of further professional development to cope with cultural diversity in their schools, the current findings can be conceived as an essential source for the development of more holistic, theory-driven, and permanent training programs for both pre-service and in-service teachers.
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