When School and Family Convey Different Cultural Messages: The Experience of Turkish Minority Group Members in France

Cristina Aelenei,Céline Darnon,Delphine Martinot

doi:10.5334/pb.283

Abstract

The present studies aim to compare the cultural values promoted by the French educational system and the Turkish families living in France to their youngsters. Because of their collectivist background Turkish immigrants may convey less individualistic values to their children compared to French parents and teachers. However, Turkish students may become more individualistic as they are socialized in the school system. In study 1 (N = 119), French school teachers, French parents, and Turkish-origin parents had to resolve six dilemmas by choosing either an individualistic or a collectivistic response-option. As expected, French teachers emphasized individualism more than Turkish parents, but not more than French parents. In Study 2 (N = 159), similar dilemmas were presented to French and Turkish-origin pupils. In elementary school, Turkish children were less individualistic than French-born children, but this gap was reduced in high school.

Highlights

The dynamic relationship between school and family has become a subject of major interest in recent decades due to the increasing cultural diversity of the student body in Western school systems
An alternative hypothesis proposes that the difference between French and Turkish-origin students in the endorsement of individualistic values should be higher among young students than among older students (H2)
Study 1 showed the discrepancy between Turkish families’ values and French school values. These results are important because the teacher sample came from two schools with high percentages of Turkishorigin pupils, working directly within a culturally diverse student body

Summary

Introduction

The dynamic relationship between school and family has become a subject of major interest in recent decades due to the increasing cultural diversity of the student body in Western school systems. With the proliferation of studies on this topic, a cultural discontinuity hypothesis between the values promoted in school versus those at home, for minority students, has emerged. Such a discontinuity may be linked to various academic challenges (for a review, see Tyler et al, 2008). The purpose of this research is twofold It aims to shed light on the cultural values promoted by the French school system and examine the extent to which these values match the cultural values p romoted by two types of families, the French families, and the Turkish families living in France (i.e., 1.2% of the population; INSEE, 2012). In Study 2, we examine which values Turkish-origin children endorse compared to their French-born counterparts when immersion in the school context is still relatively new (i.e., elementary school) as well as after several years of schooling (i.e., junior high school)

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Conclusion