Recognising cultural diversity in schools helps pupils perform better
Recognising and appreciating pupils' cultural and religious diversity increases the likelihood that students in “super-diverse” schools perform above average or even excellent. That shows new research from Flemish university KU Leuven. Simply focusing on Dutch or penalising pupils for speaking their home languages at school does not increase those chances.
International research has long shown that cultural diversity at school is not in itself an explanatory factor for school results and student well-being. How schools deal with that diversity does matter. For the first time, this has now been tested in Flemish primary schools.
KU Leuven professors Orhan Agirdag and Jozefien De Leersnyder looked at 850 fifth and sixth-grade pupils in 18 “super-diverse” schools in Ghent, Genk and Antwerp, where 80 per cent of the pupils had a non-European cultural background. The research project is part of a broader study, examining how ethnic cultural diversity is dealt with in 58 Flemish primary schools, and how that is related to the well-being and mathematics performance of the more than 3,000 pupils.
Within the 18 schools, Agirdag and De Leersnyder focused on the reasons why some pupils - contrary to expectations - do perform above average or excellent. The pupils were all presented with a mathematics test and it turned out that 44 per cent of the pupils scored better than the average of all 58 schools combined. 12 per cent achieved an excellent score. A questionnaire examined how their school handles diversity and whether that mattered to the likelihood of being a top performer.
The researchers found that the chance of performing well was not determined by the fact that the pupil spoke a language other than Dutch at home or was religious. Nor did pupils appear to perform better when their school allowed only Dutch, or punished pupils when they spoke another language in the playground, for example. When a school doesn’t recognise pupils' cultural identity and religion, and for example doesn’t allow headscarves, pupils are less likely to score well.
“If a school adopts a policy of full assimilation [as “Flemish” a school as possible], pupils are twice less likely to score above average on the mathematics test, and even four times less likely to score excellent,” explained De Leersnyder. “The results are not surprising, they are fully in line with the international literature. But it’s the first time this has also been clearly investigated, and demonstrated, in Flemish schools.”
Psychological explanation
A good language policy at school, above all needs clarity, clarified Agirdag. “Pupils need clear rules about when they can speak their home language and when they can't. But completely banning a pupil's other home language from school has no effect.”
“The explanation is probably found in psychological processes such as feeling at home and thus appreciated, or feeling discriminated against,” said De Leersnyder. “If a pupil's home language and culture is seen as ‘deficient’, he or she will probably feel less appreciated. And on that front, the science is clear: discrimination correlates with worse school performance and feeling at home with better.”
The researchers call on policy-makers to be open to diversity in schools. “Let's look at what the science says with an open mind and proceed as scientifically sound as possible.”
#FlandersNewsService | Pupils in a school in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on 16-03-2012 © BELGA PHOTO Patrick Post/HOLLANDSE HOOGTE