MaD Colloquium: Attitudes Towards Gender Equality and Towards Equal Rights for all Ethnic Groups

Abstract

Background. Civic and citizenship education aims to prepare students for their roles as adult citizens in their societies. In diverse democratic societies support of equal rights for all group is necessary for the development and persistence of inclusive structures. The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 (ICCS 2016) aims to assess how students across the world are prepared to become citizens. The presentation will cover an introduction into the study design and analyses of the support of equal rights for men and women as well as the support of equal rights for all ethnic groups. Method. The analyses employ German subsample, which consists of 1.451 students in 55 unique classrooms in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Weights are applied to calculate descriptive statistics with SPSS and multilevel analyses with Mplus. Results. Descriptive analyses reveal a strong support for both facets of tolerance in NRW. The support is stronger in Germany, NRW than in most other European participating countries. Multilevel analyses on level one (students) indicate that girls tend to support equal rights stronger than boys and that a higher socioeconomic status statistically predicts both facets of tolerance. Further, students who favor a strong influence of religion in the society report less support towards equal gender rights. After controlling for the previous factors, higher civic knowledge significantly and positively predicts both aspects of tolerance. Strong correlations on the classroom level hinder extensive level 2 analyses. Preliminary analyses indicate that the shared socioeconomic status strongly predicts levels of tolerance in the classroom and a higher proportion of immigrants is connected to a weaker shared support of equal rights for men and women. Discussion. The results indicate the importance of formal citizenship education for the formation of attitudes relevant in diverse democracies. Further, educators need to be aware of challenges connected to classrooms with high numbers of students with little socioeconomic capital.