Abstract
Past research on ethnic composition effects on migrant and ethnic majority students' performance has reported inconclusive results: Some studies have found no relationship between the proportion of migrant students in school and students' performance, some revealed positive effects, whereas others showed negative effects of the proportion of migrant students. Most of the studies did not consider whether an increase in the proportion of migrant students in the classroom has different effects on migrant and ethnic majority students' performance. For this reason, the present study (N = 9215) extends previous research by investigating the cross-level interaction effect of the proportion of Turkish-origin students in classrooms on Turkish-origin and German students' reading performance with data based on the German National Assessment Study 2008/2009 in the school subject German. In addition, we examined the cross-level interaction effect of Turkish-origin students' proportion on sense of belonging to school for Turkish-origin and German students, as sense of belonging has been shown to be an important predictor of well-being and integration. No cross-level interaction effect on performance emerged. Only a small negative main effect of the Turkish-origin students' proportion on all students' performance was found. As predicted, we showed a cross-level interaction on sense of belonging. Only Turkish-origin students' sense of belonging was positively related to the proportion of Turkish-origin students: The more Turkish-origin students there were in a classroom, the higher Turkish-origin students' sense of belonging. German students' sense of belonging was not related to the ethnic classroom composition. Implications of the results in the educational context are discussed.
Highlights
In contrast to previous research on ethnic composition effects in the educational context, we examined whether the ethnic composition of a specific ethnic group, namely Turkishorigin students, in the classroom is differentially related to the performance and sense of belonging of Turkish-origin and German students
The results showed that reading performance and sense of belonging were merely weakly correlated for Turkish-origin and German students, respectively (r = 0.09, p = 0.043; r = 0.02, p = 0.023)
The present findings add to this ambiguous picture; we showed that an increase in the percentage of migrant students was positively associated with their sense of belonging to the school, which might positively contribute to migrant students’ perception of fit in academic environments and well-being, whereas ethnic majority students’ sense of belonging was not affected
Summary
Whereas some research showed that a higher percentage of migrant students in a school or classroom can have detrimental effects on all students’ academic performance (Stanat, 2006), other studies showed that a more diverse composition of students in classrooms, including both ethnic and achievement-related diversity, can have benefits for the performance of migrant students or low-performing students (Lou et al, 1996; Konan et al, 2010). To add to previous research on ethnic composition effects in the educational context, in the present work we investigate the relationship between the ethnic composition of a specific ethnic group, namely Turkish-origin students (the largest migrant group in Germany; Statistisches Bundesamt, 2012), on classroom level on the performance of Turkish-origin and German students
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