Cultural Diversity in the Classroom and its Effects on Academic Performance
A Cross-National Perspective
Abstract
Drawing on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment (OECD/PISA), we examined the relationship between the percentage of immigrant students and the reading and mathematics performances of native and immigrant students across nations. In line with research on cultural diversity, results indicated performance benefits as the percentage of immigrant students increased across nations. Interestingly, these effects remained significant for both native and immigrant students, once several other predictors of test performance at the national, school, and individual levels were controlled for. These findings challenge the assumption that the increasing presence of immigrant students in educational institutions represents a threat to native students’ academic performance. Potential mechanisms are proposed and discussed, offering new avenues for research.
References
2007). Poor background or low returns? Why immigrant students in Germany perform so poorly in the Program for International Student Assessment? Education Economics, 15, 215–230.
(2004). Effects of racial diversity on complex thinking in college students. Psychological Science, 15, 507–510.
(2004). Heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment: Evidence from Switzerland on natives and second generation immigrants. IZA Discussion Papers 1354, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
(1996). Majority and minority influence, task representation and inductive reasoning. British Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 123–136.
(2008). Leftists’ and rightists’ IQ as a function of stereotype salience. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1602–1606.
(2008). Performance boosts in the classroom: Stereotype endorsement and prejudice moderate stereotype lift. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1421–1424.
(2004). Educational attainment: Analysis by immigrant generation. Economics of Education Review, 23, 361–379.
(2006). The effects of age at arrival and enclave schools on the academic performance of immigrant children. Economics of Education Review, 25, 121–132.
(2001). Black experimenters and the intellectual test performance of White participants: The tables are turned. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 158–165.
(2001). Group consensus and minority influence: Implications for innovation. Oxford: Blackwell.
(2003). Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 741–749.
(1984). The social development of the intellect. Oxford: Pergamon.
(2001). Ethnicity, forms of capital, and educational achievement. International Review of Education, 47, 513–538.
(2001). The immigration dilemma: The role of perceived group competition, ethnic prejudice, and national identity. Journal of Social issues, 57, 389–412.
(2004). Perceived in-group threat as a factor moderating the influence of in-group norms on discrimination against foreigners. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 135–153.
(2000). Is child like a parent? Educational attainment and ethnic origin. Journal of Human Resources, 35, 550–569.
(2003). The education and wages of immigrant children: The impact of age of arrival. Economics of Education Review, 22, 203–212.
(2001). Multivariate outlier detection and robust covariance matrix estimation – Discussion. Technometrics, 43, 303–306.
(2003). Robust methods for partial least squares regression. Journal of Chemometrics, 17, 537–549.
(2003). Race and ethnic stratification in educational achievement and attainment. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, 417–442.
(2005). What differences make a difference? The promise and reality of diverse teams in organizations. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 6, 31–55.
(2005). Accounting for immigrant nonimmigrant differences in reading and mathematics in twenty countries. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28, 925–946.
(1996). Ethnic diversity and creativity in small groups. Small Group Research, 27, 248–264.
(1996). Creating the ideal group: Composition effects at work. In , Understanding group behavior: Small group processes and interpersonal relations (Vol. 2, pp. 11–35). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1992). Minority dissent as a stimulant to group performance. In , Group processes and productivity (pp. 95–111). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
(1995). Dissent as driving cognition, attitudes, and judgments. Social Cognition, 13, 273–291.
(2001). Knowledge and skills for life: First results from PISA 2000. Paris: Author.
(2006). Where immigrant students succeed – A comparative review of performance and engagement in PISA 2003. Retrieved from www.pisa.oecd.org/.
(2007). PISA 2006: Science competencies for tomorrow’s world. Paris: OECD Publications.
(1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 741–763.
(1994). Token status and problem-solving deficits: Detrimental effects of distinctiveness and performance monitoring. Social cognition, 12, 61–74.
(2002). The differential effects of solo status on members of high and low status groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 694–707.
(2003). Solo status, stereotypes, and performance expectancies: Their effects on women’s public performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 68–74.
(2007). Immigrants’ educational disadvantage: An examination across ten countries and three surveys. Journal of Population Economics, 20, 527–545.
(2008). Cognitive effects of racial diversity: White individuals’ information processing in heterogeneous groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1129–1136.
(1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual task performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797–811.
(2001). Cultural capital and educational attainment. Sociology, 35, 893–912.
(2001). Attitudes toward minority groups in the European Union: A special analysis of the Eurobarometer 2000 survey. Vienna: The European Centre on Racism and Xenophobia.
(1965). Member heterogeneity and dyadic creativity. Human Relations, 18, 33–55.
(2000). Human Development Report 2000: Human rights and human development. New York: Oxford University Press.
(2003). Human Development Report 2003: Millennium development goals: A compact among nations to end human poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.
(2006). Human Development Report 2006: Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis. New York: Oxford University Press.
(2007). Work group diversity. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 515–541.
(2003). Stereotype lift. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 456–467.
(