Classroom identification in ethnic minority and majority students: Effects of relationships and ethnic composition

Perceived Teacher Discrimination and Depressive Feelings in Adolescents: The Role of National, Regional, and Heritage Identities in Flemish Schools

Adolescents’ identities are multiple, yet there is very little research that investigates the importance of intersecting identities, especially in relationship to teacher ethnic/racial discrimination and mental health. Multiplicity is often approached bi-dimensional (heritage and national identities) yet this study highlights the importance of regional identity. Regions are distinct socio-political contexts in relation to migration and integration dynamics. Hence, this study investigates for different combinations of national, heritage and regional identities (i.e. Flemish, Belgian and Turkish or Moroccan) the relationship between students’ experiences with teacher ethnic/racial discrimination and students’ depressive feelings. Latent Class Analysis of survey data involving a sample of 439 adolescents (M_age = 18, SD = 0.93; Girls = 49%) with Turkish (41%) or Moroccan origin in Flanders, shows three identification classes: full integration (35%), national integration (40%) and (weak) separation (24%). All these identity profiles had in common that heritage identification was high, yet they were highly distinct due to variation in national and regional identification. Additional, multilevel modelling showed that nationally integrated adolescents were less depressed than fully integrated adolescents. This finding illustrates the importance of adolescents’ identity multiplicity for understanding their resilience in relation to teacher discrimination.

All together now: Cooperative classroom climate and the development of youth attitudes toward immigrants

Although classrooms have been described as an important socialization agent for the development of intergroup attitudes, the role of classroom climate has rarely been investigated. This 5-wave study of Swedish adolescents (N = 892, 51.1% girls, nested in 35 classrooms) examined the role of cooperative classroom climate for the development of youth attitudes toward immigrants. The results of multilevel analyses showed that adolescents who perceived classroom climate to be more cooperative had lower levels of anti-immigrant attitudes compared to youth who perceived the classroom climate as less cooperative. Similarly, classrooms with a more cooperative climate were more positive toward immigrants than classrooms with a less cooperative climate. In addition, cooperative classroom climate did not moderate the effects of classroom ethnic diversity on youth attitudes. These findings suggest that cooperative classroom climate reduces the risk of prejudice development.

School Satisfaction in Immigrant and Chilean Students: The Role of Prejudice and Cultural Self-Efficacy

Latin-American immigration has transformed Chilean schools into new multicultural scenarios. Studies about intergroup dynamics among students from different cultural backgrounds and their psychological consequences are still limited in south–south migration contexts. Literature has suggested that intergroup relations influence students’ satisfaction with school, and they could be improved by the development of competences to cope with cultural differences. This study aims to verify if cultural self-efficacy and its dimensions mediated the influence of prejudice on satisfaction with school, in a sample composed by N = 690 Chilean and Latin-American immigrant secondary students. Results showed that cultural self-efficacy reduced the effect of prejudice in satisfaction with school, in the cases of both immigrant and Chilean students. The dimensions of cultural self-efficacy in processing information from other cultures and mixing with different others make the difference. Findings’ contributions for the understanding of adolescents’ intergroup relations and psychosocial interventions at school are discussed.