School ethnic composition and aspirations of immigrant students in Belgium

Abstract

This article examines the association between school ethnic composition and immigrant students' intentions to finish high school and to move on to higher education. We used data from 1324 immigrant and 10,546 native students gathered in the school year 2004-2005 in a sample of 85 Flemish (Belgian) secondary schools. Logistic multilevel analyses (HLM6) show that students attending schools with a majority of native students (enrolling less than 20% immigrant students) were twice as likely to plan to finish high school and to plan for higher education than those attending high concentration schools (more than 50% immigrant students). These associations were due to students' socio-economic status (SES) and there was no difference in aspirations between high and low concentration schools after controlling for students' SES and the SES context of the school. All else being equal, immigrant students in high concentration schools tended to aspire to finish high school and move on to higher education slightly more than those attending medium concentration schools (20-50% immigrant students). The analyses further show that these differences between high and medium concentration schools can be explained by the more optimistic culture in high concentration schools. The main conclusion is that high concentration schools are not necessarily detrimental for students' educational aspirations

Factors Influencing Academic Motivation of Ethnic Minority Students: A Review

“…Eight studies found higher levels of motivation among minority students (Choi, Bempechat, & Ginsburg, 1994;Gillen-O'Neel, Ruble, & Fuligni, 2011;Goodenow & Grady, 1993;McInerney, 2008;Sentell, 2012;Strage, 1999;Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010;Young, Johnson, Hawthorne, & Pugh, 2011), whereas six studies found higher levels of motivation among majority students (Hill et al, 2004;Hill & Wang, 2015;Sentell, 2012;Strage, 1999;Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010;Young et al, 2011). It has to be borne in mind that these studies used different instruments for the measurement of motivation, which vary from measuring intrinsic motivation (Gillen-O'Neel et al, 2011) and the intention to pursue further education (McInerney, 2008) to the motivation for academic success (intrinsic, extrinsic, and amotivation; Young et al, 2011).…”

“…Here 14 factors were found to be positively related with motivation: parental support (Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003;Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010), family (guidance, material support, etc. ; Kenny et al, 2007), negative parental influence (McInerney, 2008), parental monitoring (Hill & Wang, 2015;Lowe & Dotterer, 2013;Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003), mothers' warmth (Lowe & Dotterer, 2013), fathers' warmth (Lowe & Dotterer, 2013), parental warmth (Hill & Wang, 2015), language spoken at home (Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003), help given by parents (Choi et al, 1994), control of parents (Choi et al, 1994), parents' help with academic tasks (Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003), communication with caregivers (Basáñez et al, 2013), parental autonomy support (Hill & Wang, 2015), and parent-child relationship (including parental affection, parental emotional support, and parental independence encouragement; Yuan et al, 2016).…”

“…In this subcategory, we found 17 factors facilitating the motivation of ethnic minority students: leadership skills (Strage, 1999), self-perception of an internal locus of control (Strage, 1999), academic confidence (Strage, 1999), social confidence (Strage, 1999), sense of academic control (Gavala & Flett, 2005), college-going self-efficacy (Gonzalez, Stein, & Huq, 2013), self-efficacy (beliefs; Bembenutty, 2007;Eaton & Dembo, 1997), self-reliance (McInerney, 2008), positive self-concept (McInerney, 2008), self-concept (McInerney, 1990), school self-esteem (Lowe & Dotterer, 2013), effort regulation (Bembenutty, 2007), academic ability (Stewart, Stewart, & Simons, 2007), educational progress (Wood et al, 2011), fear of academic failure (Eaton & Dembo, 1997), academic effort (Esparza & Sanchez, 2008), and behavioral engagement ("including completing homework, paying attention, and participating in school activities"; Hill & Wang, 2015, p. 226). Five factors in this subcategory were barriers to the motivation of ethnic minority students: fear of success (Lew, Allen, Papouchis, & Ritzler, 1998), previous class failure (Stewart et al, 2007), negative self-concept (McInerney, 2008), lack of self-discipline (Kenny et al, 2007), and sense of futility (Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010).…”

“…Five factors had a positive influence on the motivation of ethnic minority students: age (O'Hara et al, 2012;Perreira, Fuligni, & Potochnick, 2010;Sentell, 2012;Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010), being a female (sex; Kfir, 1988;O'Hara et al, 2012;Perreira et al, 2010;Plunkett and Bámaca-Gómez, 2003;Sentell, 2012;Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010), being foreign-born (Perreira et al, 2010), (general) intellectual ability/ intelligence (Hudley, 1997;Marjoribanks, 1985), and police arrest (Stewart et al, 2007). Six factors were found to be barriers in this subcategory: age (Gonzalez et al, 2013), length of residency in United States (St-Hilaire, 2002), limited knowledge of English (Behnke, Piercy, & Diversi, 2004), drug use (Kenny et al, 2007), person-based barriers (e.g., not feeling smart enough and having a good job already; Gonzalez et al, 2013), and being a male (Hill & Wang, 2015).…”

“…Academic self-efficacy measured with four items from the scholastic competence scale of self-perception profile for adolescents Tseng (2004) Academic motivation: value of academic success and future utility of education Academic motivation assessed with two measures: value of academic success (six items, for example, students were asked to rate how important it was for them to "do well in school") and future utility of education (five items, for example, "doing well in school is the best way for me to succeed as an adult") Van Houtte and Stevens (2010) 1. Intentions to finish high school.…”