'Miss, can I thrive here?' How teachers co-shape adolescents' cultural (mis)fit in self, cognition and motivation as well as their links with well-being and educational outcomes

In many countries, there are large ethnic gaps in well-being and educational achievement. For more than 50 years, scholars have proposed these can be partially understood from a ‘mismatch’ between the school culture and that of the disadvantaged pupils. In this C1, we provide the first large-scale stringent test of these theories by calculating (rather than assuming) pupils’ cultural (mis)fit with their teachers and high SES majority culture’s patterns of self-construal, cognition and motivation (obj.1) – three domains that are not only crucial for education but also characterized by systematic cultural variation. Crucially, we also map the ways in which teachers co-shape pupils’ changes in cultural fit (obj. 2) and identify how teachers can modify the links between cultural (mis)fit and its consequences (obj.3). We employ a unique opportunity for synergy and data-collection by tying a focus group and teacher survey to an ERC-grant that longitudinally collects data in pupils. As such, this project helps illuminating currently invisible barriers to equity in education and paves the way for future teacher-interventions.

Keywords:cultural fit, equality in education, acculturation, teacher socialization, cultural differences, self-construal, cognition, motivation

Disciplines:Cultural and cross-cultural psychology, Educational and school psychology