Differential Effects of Cultural Pluralism Climate on Students with and without Migration Background

Description

In school, adolescents are faced with the task to develop healthy socio-emotional, motivational, and competence-related personality aspects. Especially for students with migration backgrounds, this development might be specifically sensitive to social contexts like a cultural pluralism climate (CPC). A positive CPC refers to an atmosphere in which differences between cultural groups are valued by providing opportunities to learn about and respect different cultures of students.
This study investigated whether potential differences in self-esteem, cultural identity, well-being, academic self-concept, and scholastic achievement between students with and without migration backgrounds can be explained by a CPC. The sample consisted of 1649 students from 87 Austrian secondary school classes, of which 700 had a migrant background of first or second generation. CPC was measured with the two scales multicultural interest shown by teachers and learning about intercultural relations (Schachner et al., 2016).
Results from SEM revealed no differences between first- and second-generation students in all the outcome variables. Students with migration background showed lower levels of cultural identity, scholastic achievement, academic self-concept, self-esteem, and well-being. Learning about intercultural relations positively predicted self-esteem, well-being, self-concept, and cultural identity for all students. Multicultural interest shown by teachers predicted students’ well-being. Multigroup SEM, however, showed no differential effects of both CPC scales on outcomes for both students with or without migration background.

Period	24 Aug 2022
Event title	17th International Conference on Motivation (ICM) - SIG 8 meets SIG 16: Motivation and Emotion meets Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning
Event type	Conference
Location	Dresden, GermanyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International