Measuring social marginalisation: using SEM to uncover essential social factors underlying social marginalisation in public schools

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to uncover key variable relationships underlying social marginalisation of students in public schools. Structural equation modelling was conducted on a large subset of the Danish Programme for Learning Management survey (2017) containing both student (Grades 4–10, ages 10–16) and parent responses (N = 42,702). The Social Marginalisation Scale (SMS) was utilised. The results indicate that teacher support is vital for securing a positive classroom environment and for protecting students against social marginalisation. Moreover, a stronger parental community was associated with a more supportive classroom environment and lower social marginalisation in school.

KEYWORDS:

• SEM
• marginalisation
• teacher support
• parental involvement
• classroom environment

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my main supervisor, Professor Jacob Brix, for his continuous support and encouragement. Moreover, I wish to thank my co-supervisor, Assistant Professor Antonia Scholkmann. In addition, I want to thank my research group CaBE at Aalborg University for providing me with the exciting opportunity to conduct quantitative research on marginalisation. Finally, I wish to thank all children and parents who participated in the PLM survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

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

Notes

1 Programme for Learning Management (in Danish: Program for Laeringsledelse) was a partnership between the Laboratory of Research-Based School Development (LSP) from Aalborg University, Centre for Public Competence Development (COK), and 13 municipalities. The A.P. Moeller Foundation funded the project (L. Qvortrup et al., 2016).

2 As part of the data gathering and preparation process, parent and student responses were merged into individual cases by the data firm Conexus.

3 For more information on the theoretical development of this factor, see Nordahl (2018, p. 25).

4 Identical questionnaires were administered in 2015, 2017, and 2019.

5 In this study, the survey data from 2017 were analysed, containing responses from 191 public schools (including regular and special schools).

6 This case number is higher than the average response rate for students in Table 1 because some parents responded to the questionnaire while their children did not and vice versa. Moreover, some students and parents did not answer all items of the questionnaire.

7 CE7: “The others don’t care about how I feel”.

8 CE5: “I have many friends in the classroom”; CE8: “The other students like me”.

9 SM6: “I spend time with other students in the breaks”; CE6: “You are good enough, even if you are not as skilled as others or different from others in the classroom”.

10 Goodness of fit (GFI) and the adjusted goodness of fit (AGFI) were .97 and .96, respectively, indicating a good absolute model fit because the values exceed .95 (Byrne, 2016).

11 The mother’s highest completed education was measured in four categories: (1) primary school, (2) high school or vocational education, (3) 1–4 years of tertiary education, (4) more than 4 years of tertiary education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Brygger Andersen

Martin Brygger Andersen (MSc in Sociology) is a PhD Student at the Department of Culture and Learning at Aalborg University. He specialises in research on well-being and mental health, including educational research on marginalisation and social exclusion.