ATTACHMENT TO EUROPE AMONG SCHOOL LEADERS IN BERLIN AND LONDON

ABSTRACT

Comparisons of public opinion in England and Germany consistently show higher levels of attachment to Europe and support for European integration in Germany. The respective cross-national differences are empirically well-documented, can be framed in plausible macro-contextual explanations, and are – on the descriptive level – confirmed in the present survey of Berlin and London state secondary school head teachers. However, in view of such conclusive evidence, it is easy to overlook cross-national convergences pertaining to people's individual experiences and perceptions. This article offers an alternative view on empirically well-documented and theoretically plausible cross-national differences in levels of attachment to Europe, with a particular interest in the field of formal education. Drawing on a series of multivariate statistical analyses, it demonstrates that – in Berlin as well as in London – levels of attachment to Europe largely depend on the head teachers' intercultural experiences and skills as well as their notions of Europe as object of attachment. The respective findings lend support to educational programmes and initiatives that promote intercultural experiences and skills as means towards further European integration.

Keywords:

• attachment
• Europe
• intercultural capital
• teachers
• England
• Germany

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the 281 Berlin and London head teachers who participated in my research. I would also like to thank the ESRC for its generous support (PTA-030-2004-00357). A comprehensive list of acknowledgements can be found in Pöllman (2008b).

Notes

¹See Pöllmann (2009) for a more detailed discussion of ‘intercultural capital’.

²There is a general trend towards higher response rates in surveys conducted in Germany. Furthermore, recent research suggests that response rates are particularly low from London schools (Lynn and Egerton 2002).

³For more information on concepts, operational measures, choice of research populations, sampling, data collection, response rates, and variable transformations, see Pöllmann (2008b).

⁴I computed a number of post-estimation procedures known as ‘SPost’ (for Stata Post-estimation commands) and written by J. Scott Long and Jeremy Freese. SPost is available for download from within Stata^® (i.e., ‘net search spost’). For further details, see Long and Freese (2003).

⁵As Sinnott (2005) demonstrates, this ‘degrees-of-attachment scale is to be preferred to the more commonly used scale running from nationality only to European only’ (Sinnott 2005: 221). See Pöllmann (2008b) for information on the respective survey question.

⁶The recoding procedure reads as follows: ‘0–2’ into ‘0’, ‘3–4’ into ‘1’, and '5–7’ into ‘2’. See Pöllmann (2008b) for information on the respective survey questions and a discussion of univariate results.

⁷‘Identification’ (other than ‘identity’) would have done a similar job since it logically implies an object of identification (i.e., ‘to identify with x’).

⁸The recoding procedure reads as follows: ‘0–4’ into ‘0’, ‘5–6’ into ‘1’, and '7’ into ‘2’. See Pöllmann ( 2008b) for information on the respective survey question and a discussion of univariate results.

⁹To achieve an appropriate ratio of empirical cases to categories of explanatory variables, a new three-point ordinal scale was created, as outlined in Table 1 and Appendix 1. The recoding procedure reads as follows: ‘0-1’ into ‘0’, ‘2’ into ‘1’, and '3-4’ into ‘2’. See Pöllmann (2008b) for information on the respective survey question and a discussion of univariate results.

¹⁰When mentioned in relation to head teachers, ‘her’ stands for ‘his or her’ – and ‘she’ for ‘he or she’.

¹¹The recoding procedure reads as follows: ‘0–6’ into ‘0’, ‘7–9’ into ‘1’, and '10–16’ into ‘2’. See Pöllmann (2008b) for information on the respective survey questions and a discussion of univariate results.

¹²Appendix 3 provides information on the proportionate distributions of all four control variables. See Pöllmann (2008b) for information on the respective survey question, recoding procedures, and a discussion of univariate results.

¹³Related studies that use one or more of these variables include: Carey (2002), Citrin and Sides (2004), Deflem and Pampel (1996), Duchesne and Frognier (1995), Grundy and Jamieson (2005), Inglehart (1970), and Jones and Smith (2001).

¹⁴It is, however, possible – and indeed desirable – to replicate (parts of) the present research which would subsequently allow for comparisons between different periods of time.

¹⁵To further evaluate the quality of the model, a series of bivariate correlation analyses for all possible combinations of explanatory variables were conducted. None of the respective coefficients (Spearman's rho) was large enough to imply a problem of multicollinearity or any serious confounding of effects. See Pöllmann (2008b) for further details.

¹⁶See Long and Freese (2003) for information on the computation of ideal types using Stata^®.

¹⁷In future research, it would be interesting to learn more about what (head) teachers mean when thinking of Europe's cultural history, with a view on possible implications for teaching and learning.