Marloes Hagenaars about her dissertation: "Too Hard To Handle? How Flemish Teachers Respond to Ethnic Diversity in the Classroom."

In most Western societies, classrooms are becoming increasingly ethnically diverse due to global migration, urbanization and policy changes. This both presents unique opportunities and challenges for teachers, who have to navigate and respond to the diverse needs of students. As found in previous studies, teachers, especially ethnic majority teachers, feel unprepared to teach in multicultural classrooms and perceive that they lack formal training. This is an important issue, considering the systematic disadvantages that are faced by ethnic minority students. These include the ethnic achievement gap, less access to a school of choice, lower evaluations by teachers, a lower sense of school belonging and a higher likelihood to experience ethnic discrimination in school. Understanding the role of the teacher in this context is important as it can provide more insight into the potential barriers that may prevent teachers from offering equal opportunities for all students.

This dissertation explored how Flemish teachers in secondary education respond to ethnic diversity and their motivations for doing so. It aims to unravel how these educators navigate their daily interactions with students from various ethnic backgrounds. This is explored through the lens of the MAC framework, which categorizes responses to ethnic diversity into multicultural, assimilationist, and colourblind approaches. Previous studies have found that adopting a multicultural approach to ethnic diversity generally has more beneficial outcomes for students, while assimilationist and colourblind approaches often result in more harmful outcomes. While this framework is typically used to analyse school policies, this study is unique in using the MAC framework to investigate individual teachers' responses to ethnic diversity. In previous studies, teachers are often assumed to passively adopt a diversity approach in line with the school policy but teachers often enact policies differently on the basis of their own perceptions, preferences and experiences. It is therefore important to apply the MAC framework to the individual responses of teachers.

To understand how teachers respond to ethnic diversity and their motivations for doing so, this dissertation was structured around several key research themes. These include 1) examining teachers' expectations of ethnic minority students, 2) investigating how teachers respond to ethnic diversity, 3) analysing teachers' specific responses to multilingualism, 4) studying how teachers handle incidents and accusations of ethnic discrimination and 5) looking at how teachers apply intercultural competencies in these contexts. To conduct this study, a qualitative approach was used that consisted of an ethnography, semi-structured interviews and focussed observations in four strategically chosen secondary schools in Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent

This study investigates how teachers respond to ethnic diversity, revealing that they do not solely adopt a multicultural approach, which previous studies have shown to have positive outcomes for students, but also use assimilationist and colorblind approaches, often leading to negative outcomes. In the first chapter, it was found that teachers have middle-class expectations of students and parents, which led to unrealistic expectations during the COVID-19 lockdown, particularly affecting students from ethnic minority and lower socio-economic backgrounds. Familiarity with these families' realities resulted in more realistic expectations and positive teacher attitudes. Chapter 2, using the MAC framework (multicultural, assimilationist, colorblind), found that teachers switch between these approaches based on multilingualism, religious diversity, ethnic discrimination, and curriculum diversity. Teachers often adopted assimilationist responses to multilingualism and religious diversity, while their approaches to ethnic discrimination and curriculum diversity varied. Factors influencing these responses included personal beliefs, teaching needs, and school policies. The autonomy of teachers in Flanders and the specific city context, particularly Brussels, also played a role. Chapter 3 focused on multilingualism, finding that teachers often required students to speak only Dutch, an assimilationist approach influenced by school context, teaching needs, and personal beliefs. Occasionally, teachers allowed home languages under specific conditions. Chapter 4 explored teachers' responses to ethnic discrimination, revealing a tendency to view discrimination as intentional acts and to use incidents as learning opportunities, while reacting defensively to personal accusations of discrimination. Finally, Chapter 5 examined how teachers develop and use intercultural competences. Practical experience with ethnic minority students led to either teacher-centered competences, aligning with an assimilationist approach, or student-centered competences, supporting a multicultural approach. The development of student-centered competences was more likely in environments where teachers felt in control and students were not struggling, highlighting the importance of meeting teachers' basic needs to foster an inclusive classroom environment.

On the basis of this dissertation the training RE:flex was developed. It aims to encourage teachers and student-teachers to reflect on their responses to ethnic diversity and how it could be experienced by ethnic minority students. RE:flex therefore focusses on increasing awareness of unconscious biases and understanding the impacts of various diversity approaches. This training, designed to be both user-friendly and practical, focuses on real-world scenarios in education, encouraging teachers to engage in critical thinking and reflective practices about their teaching methods. It is currently used in various secondary schools in Flanders and is part of a numerous amount of teacher education programs. All the materials can be found on reflextool.be

Supervisor: Prof. dr. Peter Stevens

Co-supervisors: Prof. dr. Sara Willems, Prof. dr. Wendelien Vantieghem