Roselien Vervaet

Minority Students' Responses to Racism: The Case of Cyprus.

ABSTRACT While research has focused on the role of racism in (re)producing ethnic/racial inequalities in education, there is very little research that investigates how variability in minority students’ responses to racism can be explained. By using an ecological approach to integrate existing research on actors’ responses to racism, this study finds that researchers have generally neglected factors and processes situated at the micro- and meso-levels of analysis. Qualitative interview data with Turkish–Cypriot children enrolled in schools in the predominantly Greek-speaking part of the Republic of Cyprus are used to investigate their strategies in response to racism and the factors that explain the observed variability in their responses. The findings suggest the importance of and interactions between factors situated at different levels of analysis, including the level of organizations and social groups and face-to-face interactions in explaining variability in young people’s responses to racism.

The ethnic prejudice of Flemish pupils: the roles of school gender composition and laddish culture

ABSTRACT This study examines whether secondary schools’ gender composition and levels of laddish attitudes influence the degree of ethnic prejudice among Flemish pupils. We hypothesize that in addition to pupil-level predictors of prejudice, the school’s gender composition and its laddish culture play roles in pupils’ attitudes toward ethnic minorities. We use multilevel analysis with data obtained in 2014–2015 from 2250 Flemish pupils in 48 secondary schools in Flanders. Both girls’ and boys’ ethnic prejudice is related to their laddish attitudes. Boys’ levels of ethnic prejudice are associated with the gender composition and the laddish culture of their school, while girls’ ethnic prejudice is more likely to be influenced by the laddish culture of the school when the proportion of male pupils in the school increases. The findings suggest that in order to reduce ethnic prejudice it might be fruitful to focus on macro-level factors, such as tackling laddish cultures at school.

Multicultural Teaching in Flemish Secondary Schools: The Role of Ethnic School Composition, Track, and Teachers’ Ethnic Prejudice:

In this study, we investigate the association between a school’s ethnic composition, the track in which teachers teach, and their level of involvement with multicultural teaching (MCT) in the Flemish context, taking into account the ethnic prejudice of teachers. Multilevel analyses of data from 590 Flemish teachers in 40 Belgian secondary schools suggest that teachers in schools with more ethnic minority pupils, teachers in vocational education, and ethnically unprejudiced teachers implement more MCT. These findings highlight the need for more research into the relationship between school features, the sociopsychological characteristics of teachers, and their involvement with MCT.