Ethnic school composition, school performance and classroom behaviour in Western societies

This thesis focuses on the relationship between ethnic composition and both schooling outcomes and classroom behaviour, making the crucial distinction between the share of migrant-origin students and ethnic diversity. The current educational literature shows mixed results for the relationship between ethnic diversity and school performance and lacks information on the relationship between ethnic diversity and student behaviour during lessons. The results shows hardly any negative relationships between ethnic diversity and school performance for native-origin students, mostly negative relationships between ethnic diversity and reading performance, and mixed findings for the relationship between ethnic diversity and math performance for migrant-origin students. The shortage of qualified teachers partly explains the positive relationship between the share of native-origin students and reading performance and the shortage of teaching materials partly explains the relationship between ethnic diversity and school performance, but not the relationship between the share of native-origin students and reading performance for migrant-origin students. Classroom disruption partly explains the negative relationship between ethnic diversity and reading performance for migrant-origin students The significant positive relationship between ethnic diversity and classroom disruption during reading lessons is weaker in countries with a more inclusive integration policy. Therefore, this thesis shows how inclusive integration policies relate to the everyday relations of both native- and migrant-origin students in ethnically diverse schools and to the goals of multiculturalism policies. Finally, inclusive integration policies indirectly provide students in ethnically diverse schools more opportunities to work on their reading performance through a decline of classroom disruption