Cognitive and non-cognitive effects of diversity in Dutch elementary

schools

Eddie Denessen, Geert Driessen & Joep Bakker

Eddie Denessen, Geert Driessen, and Joep Bakker,

The Dutch educational context

• School and Classroom diversity, institutional differentiation – comprehensive primary education – tracking in secondary schools – state funded private schools (denominational)

• Concentrations of ethnic minorities in big cities (residential

segregation) – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht

• Freedom of school choice – School composition as reason for school choice

Diversity effects: theoretical background

School and classroom segregation is assumed to negatively affect

… cognitive outcomes of minority and low status students – lower teacher expectations of student ability – less challenging education – lower levels of student aspiration

… non-cognitive outcomes of minority and low status students

– negative intergroup attitudes (Allport) – less access to diverse values and norms – less opportunities to discuss culture differences

Diversity effects: empirical findings

Two types of analyses: 1 Between school effects analyses of variation in student outcomes related to school

composition characteristics 2 Within school effects (peer effect studies)

analyses of differential effects of school composition characteristics on

student outcomes

Between school effects

Language (left) and math (right) performance scores of 6th grade students related to the percentage of ethnic minority students of the student population (Gijsberts, 2006)

Within school effects Multi-level analyses example (Peetsma et al, 2006)

Diversity effects: empirical findings

General results in Dutch research: Cognitive outcomes - Absent or weak positive effects of classroom composition - Decrease in classroom composition effects Non-cognitive outcomes - No evidence of classroom diversity effects on positive

intergroup attitudes (Bakker et al., 2007) - Racial tensions in mixed schools (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2002)

International comparison of Dutch findings

Europe: similar outcomes US: stronger peer effects on cognitive as well as non- cognitive outcomes Possible explanations: - the nature of diversity in national political contexts - levels and types of segregation due to institutional differentiation

and diverse systems of choice

Methodological problems

Classroom composition

Student outcomes

Methodological problems

Classroom composition ?

Student outcomes

Teachers’ role in diverse classrooms

What do we expect of teachers? - high levels of culture responsiveness (Brown, 2007) - understand students’ backgrounds - build cross-cultural communication - deliver culturally responsive education - show positive attitudes towards diversity (Banks, 2008)

Teachers’ role in diverse classrooms

Effects of prejudiced teacher attitudes on teacher expectations and student performance in Dutch primary schools (Van den Bergh et al, 2010)

Conclusion

Studies on diversity effects have methodologically improved - large scale - mutli-level - Effects are weak implications for anti-segregation policies - More insight is needed in teacher effects - include relevant teacher variables in designs - small scale intervention studies