The effect of classroom diversity on tolerance and participation in England, Sweden and Germany

majority children self-selected in diverse classes. This would have the effect of reversing
the causal order between diversity and ethnic tolerance: parents who are more tolerant
from the beginning “create” diverse classrooms by sending their children to schools with
a mixed ethnic intake (or vice versa, intolerant parents sending their children to all-white
schools - which would have the same effect). Although a selection effect can partly be
neutralized by controlling for individual background variables (as I have done) and is
likely to be small in societies with limited school choice such as Sweden (Kokkonen et al
2010), it cannot rule out that some self-selection has occurred. To eliminate this bias and
establish the “value added” effect of diversity, it is indispensible that future survey
studies adopt a longitudinal panel design with repeated measures of the outcomes of
interest.

Literature

Abbaci Atlas (2009)  http://www.abacci.com/ atlas/demography.asp? countryID=203,

accessed 20 May 2009.

Allport, G. (1954) The nature of prejudice, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

APSA Task Force (2004) American democracy in an age of rising inequality,
http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf, accessed on 7 July 2009.

Billings, A. and Holden, A. (2007) Interfaith interventions and cohesive communities: the
effectiveness of interfaith activity in towns marked by enclavisation and parallel lives,
report prepared for the Home Office.

Blalock, H. M. (1967) Toward a theory of minority-group relations, New York: John
Wiley & Sons.

Brubaker, R. (1992) Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany. Harvard
University Press, Boston.

Campbell, D.E. (2006) Why we vote: how schools and communities shape our civic life,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

19

<<   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   >>

More intriguing information