Abstract
Background: Despite the growing body of research concerning affective relationships between teachers and ethnic minority students, very little is known about student-teacher relationship (STR) quality for religious minority students. Many Islamic schools have a mixed workforce consisting of both Muslim and non-Muslim teachers. This means that the quality of religiously congruent and religiously incongruent STRs can be directly compared. Aims: We investigated whether the quality of the STR experienced by Dutch Islamic school students depended on the religious background of their teacher (Muslim vs. non-Muslim). We also examined the role of teachers’ implicitly measured attitudes towards Muslims as a possible explanation for differences in relationship quality. Sample: Participants were 707 students (56.9% female) from 35 classes (Grade 3–6) (Mage = 10.02 years, SD = 1.25) and their 35 teachers (85.7% female; Mage = 32.94 years, SD = 6.37). Methods: Students reported on the quality of the relationship with their teacher (closeness, conflict, and negative expectations), and teachers’ implicit attitude towards Muslims (vs. non-Muslims) was measured with an Implicit Association Test. Results: Students reported relatively high levels of closeness and low levels of conflict and negative expectations for both Muslim and non-Muslim teachers. Conflict was slightly higher in religiously incongruent STRs, but only when teachers’ implicitly measured attitude towards Muslims (vs. non-Muslims) was included in our model. Conclusion: Results of this study indicate that religious incongruence does not play a major role in STR quality in Islamic primary education.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e12457 |
Pages (from-to) | 465-483 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | British Journal of Educational Psychology |
Volume | 92 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 8 Sept 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank the pupils, their parents, teachers, and schools who participated in this study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.
Keywords
- Islamic schools
- Muslim children
- attitude
- religious incongruence
- student-teacher relationship
- teachers