Session Information
05 SES 05.5 A, General Poster Session
General Poster Session
Contribution
Feelings of association with a particular cultural group and consequently sense of belonging to it is one of the important factors in immigrant adaptation process which affects both sociocultural adaptation together with academic achievement and psychological adaptation (Phinney et al, 2001). School is usually the first socio-cultural institution in which students with migrant background are included. Consequently, school environment also provides these students with an introduction to host country’s social, political and cultural values and attitudes, which fosters their sense of belonging to wider host society. It can be concluded that sense of belonging to school is a precondition of (successful) adaptation of migrant students in school environment, which foretells the (successful) adaptation to wider society. Additionally, sense of belonging to school is connected to cognitive and psychosocial functioning (Aderman & Freeman, 2004). Namely, higher sense of belonging to school is connected to higher intrinsic motivation and higher academic achievement, which is linked to more favourable occupational possibilities. Thus, it can be concluded that sense of belonging to school plays an important role in successful adaptation of students with migrant background (Chui et al., 2012).
In order to determine the factors influencing the development of sense of belonging to school, El Zaatari and Maalouf (2022) argue that Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory can provide a comprehensive basis. The Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) views child development as a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from immediate settings of family and school to broad cultural values, laws, and customs. The Bronfenbrenner’s model puts the individual (student) and their characteristics (biological and dispositional), which affect the interactions with their environment (e.g. peers, parents, teachers, school as an institution etc.) in the center of the model. Student however exists in several systems of interconnected relationships, roles, activities and settings (Shelton, 2019). The first system – microsystem, focuses on students’ proximal relationships with their peers, family, teachers, friends. The second system is mesosystem which includes distal relationships, which include school climate, school policies, rules, practices etc. In this system students’ individual microsystems are interconnected and influence each other (Saab, 2009). Then exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem follow.
The main focus of this poster is to examine the differences in feeling of belonging to school and factors affecting it based on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory on the individual, micro- and mesosystem level among Slovenian students with migrant background included in the PISA sample. The decision to only analyse the first two systems is based on the premise, that they are most influential to child’s development. Additionally, the poster compares Slovenian data to data from two other EU countries, namely Portugal and Hungary. The selection of these two countries was based on the Migrant Integration Policy Index assessment of responsiveness of the educational systems to the needs of immigrant children, where Portugal represents a highly responsive educational system and Hungary represents a non-responsive educational system.
Using the PISA 2018 data the paper firstly examines the differences in feeling of belonging as one of the prerequisites of successful adaptation of immigrant students (first- and second-generation) and then analyses and compares the individual factors, namely, resilience and cognitive flexibility/adaptablity, which are proved to be linked to positive and successful adaptation of migrants (Albuquerque & Bueno, 2020), and factors of micro- (teacher support in test language lesson, parental support) and mesosystems (discriminative school climate, disciplinary climate) which predict the feeling of belonging to school. The overall goal of the paper is to determine which individual and ecological system factors predict the feeling of belonging to school in the three chosen countries.
Method
Participants: The current study analyses three PISA 2018 representative migrant student samples from Slovenia (Nfirst-generation = 213; Nsecond-generation = 200; Ntotal sample = 5.088), Portugal (Nfirst-generation = 104; Nsecond-generation = 172; Ntotal sample = 4.902), Hungary (Nfirst-generation = 38; Nsecond-generation = 54; Ntotal sample = 4.253). The PISA focuses on a sample of 15-year-old students. For purposes of this poster, only subsamples of first-generation and second-generation migrant students respectively are used. Instruments and included variables: Each sampled student answered a background questionnaire, where scales were derived from. Students’ immigrant background was used as a grouping variable (first-generation immigrant students: foreign-born students whose parents are also foreign-born; second-generation immigrant students: born in the country of destination, while their parents are foreign-born). The scale of sense of belonging to school was measured with six items using a four-point Likert scale. The scales for individual level and micro- and mesosystem were attributed to Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems based on definitions as follows: Individual level: Resilience (five items using four-point Likert scale) Cognitive flexibility/adaptability (student’s flexibility/adaptability in dealing with challenging or difficult situations, which may include intercultural situations, measured with six items using a five-point Likert scale) Microsystem: Teacher support in test language lessons (four items using four-point Likert scale) Parental support is understood as perceived emotional support from students’ parents (three items using four-point Likert scale) Mesosystem: Discriminative school climate measures the absence of teachers’ stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination towards migrants (four items using four-point Likert scale) Disciplinary climate in the test language classroom (five items using four-point Likert scale) Sampling and procedure: A two-stage stratified sampling design was used. In the first stage schools from the pool of all schools where 15-year-olds are enrolled are sampled. In the second stage, 42 (or fewer) students within each school included were sampled. These sampling procedures ensured the representativeness of the test population. It took approximately 35 minutes for students to respond to the student background questionnaire. Statistical analyses: Firstly, descriptive statistics were used, namely correlations in order to test for multicollinearity. Secondly, differences in sense of belonging to school between the student groups per country were calculated. Finally, linear regression was used in order to determine which factors predict a sense of belonging to school per student group per country. Data were analyzed using the statistical program IEA IDB Analyzer (Version 5.0.17) due to the two-stage sampling in the study (the program uses individual students and sample weights).
Expected Outcomes
Results show that there are significant differences in sense of belonging to school between first- and second-generation migrant students in Slovenia and Portugal. In both countries first-generation migrant students assess their sense of belonging to school significantly lower than second-generation migrant students. There is no statistically significant difference in sense of belonging between the two student groups in Hungary. In Slovenia resilience and parental support proved to be significant predictors of sense of belonging to school for first-generation migrant students, whereas cognitive flexibility/adaptability and discriminative school climate proved to be significant predictors for second-generation migrant students. For comparison, in Hungary cognitive flexibility/adaptability and parental support proved to be significant predictors of sense of belonging for first-generation migrant students, while only resilience proved to be statistically significant predictor for second-generation migrant students. On the other hand, in Portugal discriminative school climate is significant predictor of sense of belonging for first-generation migrant students, while both individual factors and teacher support in test language lessons are significant predictors of sense of belonging for second-generation migrant students. The findings are in line with previous studies which also found parental and teacher support to be positively linked to sense of belonging to school (Chiu et al., 2016). Moreover, the results show that discriminative school climate hinders successful adaptation of migrant student in schools, which is consistent with results of research review by Dimitrova and colleagues (2017), where it was concluded that perceived discrimination is one of the three factors connected to migrant students adaptation. Since it can be observed that students with migrant background report on lower levels of sense of belonging to school the results of the poster can serve as basis for the design of targeted policies and interventions to support students with migrant background in their adaptation to the school environment.
References
Albuquerque, E. S. G., & Bueno, J. M. H. (2020). The Effect of Resilience and Cognition on (Im) Migrant Students’ Academic Adaptation. Psico-USF, 25, 223-234. Anderman, L. H., & Freeman, T. (2004). Students’ sense of belonging in school. In M. L. Maehr & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement: Vol. 13. Motivating students, improving schools: The legacy of Carol Midgley (pp. 27–63). Greenwich, CT: Elsevier Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press. Chiu, M. M., Chow, B.W.-Y., McBride, C., & Mol, S. T. (2016). Students’ sense of belonging at school in 41 countries: Cross-cultural variability. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(2), 175–196. Chiu, M. M., Pong, S.-L., Mori, I., & Chow, B.W.-Y. (2012). Immigrant students’ emotional and cognitive engagement at school: A multilevel analysis of students in 41 countries. Journal of Youth Adolescence, 41(11), 1409–1425. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1007/ s10964- 012- 9763-x. Dimitrova, R., Özdemir, S. B., Farcas, D., Kosic, M., Mastrotheodoros, S., Michałek, J., & Stefenel, D. (2017). Is there a paradox of adaptation in immigrant children and youth across Europe? A literature review. In R. Dimitrova (Ed.), Well-being of youth and emerging adults across cultures: Novel approaches and findings from Europe, Asia, Africa and America (pp. 261–298). El Zaatari, W., & Maalouf, I. (2022). How the Bronfenbrenner Bio-ecological System Theory Explains the Development of Students’ Sense of Belonging to School?. SAGE Open, 12(4), 21582440221134089. MIPEX. (2019). Migrant Integration Policy Index 2020 – Education. Accessed at https://www.mipex.eu/education OECD. (2017). Student questionnaire for PISA 2018 - Main survey version. Accessed at https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2018database/CY7_201710_QST_MS_STQ_NoNotes_final.pdf OECD. (forthcoming-a). Scaling procedures and construct validation of context questionnaire data. In OECD, PISA 2018 Technical Report. OECD Publishing. Accessed at https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/pisa2018technicalreport/PISA2018_Technical-Report-Chapter-16-Background-Questionnaires.pdf OECD. (forthcoming-b). Sample design. In OECD, PISA 2018 Technical Report. OECD Publishing. Accessed at https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/pisa2018technicalreport/PISA2018%20TecReport-Ch-04-Sample-Design.pdf Phinney, J. S., Horenczyk, G., Liebkind, K., & Vedder, P. (2001). Ethnic identity, immigration, and well-being: An interactional perspective. Journal of Social Issues, 57(3), 493–510. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00225. Saab, H. (2009). The school as a setting to promote student health and wellbeing. QSPACE. Shelton, L. G. (2019). The Bronfenbrenner primer: A guide to Develecology. Routledge.
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