Many societies around the world are still facing severe ethnic achievement gaps in their education systems (Levels, Dronkers & Kraaykamp, 2008). It will be very important to understand how such ethnic achievement gaps arise, and how they can be reduced in order to ensure that students from all ethnic groups are encouraged to get the best out of themselves. Recent research suggests that one particularly important element is the cultural diversity model adopted by schools (CDM), with which we refer to the ways in which schools deal with ethnic-cultural diversity. For instance, not only are school cultural diversity models related to the achievement of students (e.g. Schachner et al., 2021; Celeste et al., 2019) but also to other very important outcomes such as well-being, school belonging, and interethnic relations (e.g. Celeste et al., 2019; Schachner et al., 2021; Verkuyten, 2010). Of course, in order to be able to engage in this research in the first place, it is necessary to be able to capture these constructs in a valid and reliable ways. Mostly inspired by research into the more general school climate as perceived by both students (e.g. Aldridge, J., & Ala’I, 2013; Bear et al., 2011) and teachers (e.g. Dubbeld et al., 2019), measurement scales specifically related to the school climate in terms of diversity models have also been developed in the US context (Brand et al., 2003; Byrd, 2017; 2019; Marx & Byrnes, 2012) but more recently also in the German context (Schachner et al., 2021). However, all of these existing CDM scales have one important limitation in common, namely that they do measure the domains in which CDM’s are applied.                                                                                                                    Aiming to address this gap, we have recently made an effort to show that such domain-specificity is very important. We found that the perceptions of CDM among teachers are highly domain-specific (Konings, Agirdag & De Leersnyder, in preparation). More specifically, we aimed to capture to which extent primary schools adopted an assimilationist, color-blind or pluralist diversity model in the domains of languages, religions, the curriculum, or identities according to teachers. We found that it was indeed highly important to capture perceptions of the school diversity models in domain specific ways. For instance, teachers often reported that their school adopted a strong pluralist approach in the curriculum, while simultaneously engaging in assimilationist or color-blind practices in other domains (Konings, Agirdag & De Leersnyder, in preparation). Therefore, we aimed to develop and validate a new domain specific measurement scale to capture the perceptions of students as well.             We aimed to capture the extent to which children in Belgian primary schools perceived their schools to adopt one of three often discerned cultural diversity models, namely assimilationism, color-blindness and pluralism (e.g. Agirdag, 2020; Guimond, de la Sablonnière, & Nugier, 2014). Furthermore, as in our previous pilot study among teachers, we aimed to represent several theoretical sub aspects of each cultural diversity model, such as interculturalism as a specific aspect of pluralism (Schachner et al., 2021), in order to be able to capture possible nuances (Konings, Agirdag & De Leersnyder, in preparation). In addition we also applied the distinction in terms of the domains of languages, religions, curriculum and identities. Through this study, we aim to create domain-specific measurement scales. These scales can then be used in order to study the relations between adoption of domain-specific CDM’s and important student outcomes such as achievement, well-being and ethnic relations. Also for schools, it would be highly valuable to better understand which cultural diversity model works best in which domain.

We collected data among 3073 children from the last two grades of elementary school (10-12 years old). These pupils were nested in 59 elementary schools. We asked them questions related to their perceptions of school diversity models in terms of languages (e.g. “At our school, we students get punished if they speak another language than Dutch”), religions (e.g. “At our school, it is forbidden to wear a headscarf”), curriculum (e.g. “At our school, we discuss how people in other countries live”) and identities (e.g. “I think teachers find our origin important”). We ensured that we had items capturing assimilationism, color-blindness and multiculturalism within each domain. We used our previous findings in Konings, Agirdag & De Leersnyder (in preparation) as guidelines in this process. For instance, we found that in the religious domain, neutrality seemed to be an important diversity model of its own, and consisted of items intended to measure assimilationism and color-blindness. Therefore, in the pupil questionnaire, we also explored whether we could capture this specific diversity model among pupils. We will use the split-half method in which we randomly split our sample into two separate samples, so that we can perform explanatory factor analyses on one and confirmatory factor analyses on the other sample. Using SPSS software, we will first explore which diversity models can be discerned for each of the four domains. Then, using Mplus software, we will perform multilevel confirmatory factor analyses to test 1) whether the domains can be discerned within cultural diversity models and 2) whether these diversity models can be measured on the individual and on the school level.

We expect that we can replicate the structure in Konings, Agirdag & De Leersnyder (in preparation) among pupils as well. This means that we expect to find assimiliationism, multiculturalism and interculturalism, but not color-blindness in the domain of languages. In the domain of religions, we expect to find scales for neutrality, equal treatment and pluralism (consisting of multiculturalism and interculturalism). In the curriculum, we expect to find assimilationism, color-blindness, multiculturalism and critical consciousness. In the identity domain, we expect to find assimilationism, color-blindness, multiculturalism and interculturalism. Furthermore, we expected to be able to find these domain-specific CDM’s on the individual and school level. Looking at the preliminary analyses, it seems like children perceived different domain-specific diversity models compared to teachers. In terms of languages, there was a difference between assimilationism in terms of teacher preferences and assimilationism in terms of strict rules, but none of the other CDM’s could be measured reliably. In terms of religions, we found an assimilationist (Islamophobic) scale as well as an interculturalism scale. In the curriculum, we found only found a reliable anti-racist curriculum scale and in terms of identities we found assimilationist and multicultural scales. Particularly remarkable is that we did not succeed in reliably measuring color-blindness in any of the domains. Furthermore, the domains could be discerned within CDM’s on the individual level, but this was not always true on the school level. All in all, our study suggests that it is not only possible to measure diversity models in specific domains among elementary school students, but that this is also preferrable over more general and abstract measurements of school diversity models.

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