The Impact of Perceived Teacher Support on Anti-Immigrant Attitudes from Early to Late Adolescence

Abstract

Although research has shown that school context has consequences for intergroup attitudes, few studies have examined the role of teacher qualities, such as teacher support. In addition, previous research has paid limited attention to the mechanisms that could help to explain teacher effects. This 5-wave study (2010–2015) examined the effects of perceived teacher support on the anti-immigrant attitudes of Swedish majority youth ( N = 671, M age = 13.41, 50.2% girls, 34 classrooms). It also tested whether social trust would mediate these effects. The results of multilevel analyses showed that perceived teacher support was associated with less prejudice at all levels of analysis. At the within-person level, fluctuations in teacher support were related to fluctuations in youth prejudice: in years when, on average, adolescents perceived their teachers as more supportive, they reported lower prejudice. At the between-person level, adolescents who perceived their teachers as more supportive compared to their peers reported lower prejudice. Similarly, classrooms where students shared an experience of teacher support were lower in prejudice than classrooms with weaker teacher support. The results also showed that social trust explained teacher effects: adolescents who experienced their teachers as more supportive displayed higher levels of trust and, in turn, lower levels of prejudice than youth with less supportive teachers. These findings suggest that teachers can counteract the development of prejudice and facilitate social trust in adolescents by being supportive of them.

Whose Norms, Whose Prejudice? The Dynamics of Perceived Group Norms and Prejudice in New Secondary School Classes

“…Students do not only spend lots of time among their classmates, but teachers are also important actors in their socialization ( Grütter and Meyer, 2014 ; Miklikowska et al, 2019b ). The role of teachers and student–teacher relationships in students’ intergroup attitudes has been investigated in some studies, and teachers’ support and trust toward their students have been found to hinder students’ intergroup prejudice in multi-ethnic settings in Western Europe ( Grütter and Meyer, 2014 ; Geerlings et al, 2017 ; Miklikowska et al, 2019b ). To our knowledge, however, the effect of perceived teacher norms on the formation of prejudice in adolescence has not yet been studied in Central and Eastern Europe.…”

Antiprejudice norms and ethnic attitudes in preadolescents: A matter of stimulating the “right reasons”

“…6 Related to this, future research should examine other ways in which teachers could influence children's antiprejudice motivations. Recent research has shown that the quality of students' relationship with their teachers has a positive impact on their out-group attitudes (Miklikowska, Thijs, & Hjerm, 2019) and also that this is independent of perceived teachers' antiprejudice norms and children's perceived relationship with their parents (Geerlings et al, 2017). Thus, teachers may make children more open to ethnic and cultural others by providing them with relational security rather than with antiracist messages, regardless of the perceived norms of peers and parents.…”

Parallel empathy and group attitudes in late childhood: The role of perceived peer group attitudes

“…Attachment researchers have shown that relational security can increase empathic responses (Mkulincer et al, 2001) and mitigate the fear of (unfamiliar) outgroup members (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001). Moreover, positive relations with teachers may increase openness to ethnic others (Miklikowska et al, 2019). Multicultural education often seeks to increase intergroup attitudes by prompting students to look beyond their own culture and to find commonalities with the lives of others (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2013), and increasing outgroup empathy is an effective component of interventions to prevent or reduce prejudice in children and adolescents (Beelmann & Heinemann, 2014).…”