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Swedish Primary School Pupils' Inter-ethnic Relationships

På svenska

Author

  • Mina O'Dowd
  • Paul Vedder

Summary, in English

The aim of the Swedish educational policy is educational participation and academic achieivement for all children, irrespective of ethnic background. Majority language instruction is an important tool used to achieve this goal. We argue that taking lessons in Swedish-as-a-second-language (S2) sets children apart in their class and limits their possibilities to interact with Swedish children and the immigrant children, who do not receive S2-lessons. In accordance with the contact hypothesis, we assumed that this limitation would have a negative impact on peer evaluation of these pupils' social competence. 394 children in ethnically mixed classes (grades 4-6) participated in the study reported in this article. As hypothesized, S2-children's sociability was evaluated significantly lower than that of Swedish children. Immigrant children, who do not have S2-lessions, do not have significantly lower scores. These findings were confirmed, using teachers' evaluations of children's social competence, or, perhaps, the organizational consequences of extra language lessons plays a role in children's assessments of peer competence.

Publishing year

1999

Language

English

Pages

221-228

Publication/Series

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology

Volume

40

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Psychology

Keywords

  • Sweden
  • elementary school
  • immigrant children
  • social competence
  • language proficiency

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1467-9450