Exploring group polarisation in the classroom: manifestations, frequency and determinants

Abstract

In recent times, many scholars have highlighted the emergence of group-based polarisation within Western societies. Research has demonstrated that this phenomenon has also reached educational settings, where groups of adolescents are opposed to each other. Surprisingly little has been written, though, on group-based polarisation in the classroom. This study examines along which lines (e.g. ethnic, socio-economic, or religious), how often and under which conditions group polarisation manifests itself in the context of secondary school classrooms. It does so by theorising this phenomenon, hypothesising its most common manifestation as well as the factors that may favour group-based polarisation. Following an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design, consisting of a qualitative pre-study (N = 31) and an original survey that was fielded among Dutch secondary school teachers (N = 1034), it then demonstrates that: group polarisation, as perceived by teachers, is relatively rare in Dutch secondary education, generally occurring once or a few times per year; that it manifests itself predominantly along ethnic lines, and that the ethnic composition of educational contexts, tracking, and different educational stages statistically predict this form of perceived group polarisation. Based on our findings we propose that teacher training, focusing on how to cope with group-based polarisation in the classroom should be context-specific and tailor-made.

Keywords:

• Polarisation
• intergroup relations
• school ethnic diversity
• tracking
• secondary education

Reviewing Editor:

• Reza Gholami, Education and Social Justice, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Subjects:

• Secondary Education
• Sociology of Education
• Education – Social Sciences

Acknowledgments

First of all, we would like to express our gratitude to all the teachers and experts who participated in this study. Moreover, we would like to thank Bob Timmer for his research assistance as well as the participants in a research workshop at the Utrecht University School of Governance. Their helpful comments helped us to improve the paper. Institutional Review Board Statement: This study is approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Law, Economics & Governance, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 As Huijnk (2018, p. 28) showed, 85% of Dutch citizens with a Turkish migration background, aged 15–24, consider themselves to be Muslim. This applies to 94% of Dutch citizens with a Moroccan migration background, aged 15–24.

2 At its core, this line of thought was already captured in Voltaire’s famous dictum, Lewis Coser (1964, p. 170) also alluded to: ‘Were there but one religion in England, despotism would threaten; were there two, one would see bloody civil war; but in fact there are dozens, and they live happily in peace’.

3 Accordingly, besides perceiving cultural threats and ethnic differences, these students also referred to financial and economic threats, which, according to Van Praag et al. (2015) can be explained by the fact that pre-vocational tracks are directly geared toward the labour market and specific future jobs.

4 Due to the Covid pandemic, the interviews were held online from mid-March 2020 onward. This did not significantly impact the quality of the collected data, as the teachers were themselves highly experienced users of online platforms, due to the mandatory character of online teaching in the Netherlands during this period.

5 Contrasting with subjects like chemistry or French, where polarization is less likely to manifest itself.

6 Unfortunately there are no data regarding the number of Dutch teachers qua subject. Based on data from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (2022), we do know that, at the time the survey was fielded, 76 thousand teachers were working in Dutch secondary education. Given our focus on teachers in five subjects—that cover roughly 30% of the amount of total hours within an averaged Dutch secondary education curriculum—, we can estimate that the population consists of approximately 22 thousands teachers. Accordingly, our sample covers about 4.7% of the entire population.

7 98 teachers did not respond to this question, as they stated (earlier in the survey) that they did not observe any form of polarisation in their classroom over the past 12 months.

8 During the first months of this period (14 December 2020-1 March 2021), teaching took place online due to the Covid pandemic. This may have slightly reduced the occurrence of observed polarization, yet rather limitedly

9 We are aware of the fact that similar (ethnic) group categorisations are not ‘neutral’. Instead, they should rather be considered as ways of making sense of the social world, i.e. ‘of recognizing, identifying, and classifying other people, of construing sameness and difference, and of ‘coding’ and making sense of their actions.’ (Brubaker, 2009, p. 33) In other words: ‘They are templates for representing and organizing social knowledge, frames for articulating social comparisons and explanations, and filters that govern what is noticed or unnoticed.’ (Ibid. 33).

10 We had to ask this question on the school level, instead of the classroom level, since respondents generally teach in different classes.

11 To cover the increasing heterogeneity of migration backgrounds in the Netherlands (Jennissen et al., 2018), these four examples include both European and extra-European countries, as well as ‘classic’ countries of origin in Dutch migration history (Morocco and Turkey) and countries of origin related to recent migration (Poland and Syria).

12 The tracks Havo and Vwo were merged as both tracks prepare for higher education, and because the number of respondents teaching only in Havo or only in Vwo classes is very low.

13 For more robust analyses, we merged these categories, as relatively few respondents teach only in lower secondary education or only in upper secondary education.

14 Following Sijbers et al. (2015) the data, for all analyses presented below, was weighted in terms of school denomination and region in order to align the sample with the national distribution in the study population.

15 Please note that the Y-scales differ between the graph on the left (presence of ethnic polarisation in the classroom) and on the right (polarisation strongest among ethnic groups); since the mean of the former is higher (0.67) than the mean of the latter (0.30). This also applies to Figures 4 and 5.

16 As far as we know, there are unfortunately no data regarding the number of teachers in different tracks in the Netherlands.

17 See for more details: Figure A2 in the online appendix.

18 Class-based differences between pupils would be particularly obscured in educational contexts where school uniforms are obligatory. Yet, this is not the case in the Netherlands.

Additional information

Funding

We were able to write this article thanks to the financial support of the strategic theme Dynamics of Youth and TerInfo, both at Utrecht University.

Notes on contributors

Koen Damhuis

Koen Damhuis is assistant professor at the Utrecht University School of Governance. His research interests include intergroup conflict in society and schools, political polarization, and the [appeal of] electoral radical right-wing parties.

Bjorn Wansink

Bjorn Wansink is associate professor at the Department of Education and Pedagogy at Utrecht University. His research interests center on civics and history education, multicultural education, critical thinking, sensitive topics and peace education. He is also a teacher trainer for the European Association of History Educators in (post)-conflict countries.