Do intercultural education and attitudes promote student wellbeing and social outcomes? An examination across PISA countries

Background: Recent research indicates a rise in classroom diversity and declines in students’ psychosocial outcomes, particularly for those from diverse backgrounds. These trends necessitate a concerted effort by schools to uphold social cohesion and ensure the wellbeing of all students.

Aims: We examine the associations of intercultural education practices and teachers’ intercultural attitudes with students’ psychosocial outcomes (eudaimonia, life satisfaction, positive affect, school belonging, and victimization).

Sample: We use data from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 (N = 451,846 students, 58 countries).

Methods: We utilize a series of multilevel linear regressions (L1 = students, L2 = schools, L3 = countries) to examine associations between intercultural factors and students’ psychosocial outcomes.

Results: Student-reported intercultural education practies positively predicted their eudaimonia, life satisfaction, positive affect, and school belonging. Student-reported teacher intercultural attitudes positively predicted students’ belonging and negatively predicted their frequency of victimization. Principal- and teacher-reported predictors showed negligible effects. Results were largely similar across student immigrant status and generalized across the countries examined.

Conclusions: Our findings emphasize students’ subjective experiences of intercultural factors at school, which may benefit students’ psychosocial outcomes regardless of their cultural backgrounds.

© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).