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The increasing diversity of student populations is a global educational trend. The relatively recent rapid influx of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, coupled with issues of increasing intolerance, social exclusion and feelings of alienation, and extremism among young people, are posing complex challenges for educational systems around the world. Education has a key role to play in preparing future generations to address these problems and ensuring that young people acquire the social, civic, and intercultural competences needed for active and successful participation in society. This book presents five empirical studies, designed to examine differing factors and conditions that may help schools and teachers in their endeavors to promote tolerance in a globalized world. The 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) provided the research data. This introductory chapter describes the overall theoretical framework, discusses key constructs, and outlines the aims guiding the five studies, concluding with an overview of all chapters.

Analyzing tolerance in youth may help educators to identify strategies to promote tolerance. This chapter describes the IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2009, outlining the main objectives of the survey and the assessment design. Specific variables were selected from the ICCS data for the five empirical studies in this report. After assessing the variables used in the different chapters, the methodological features common to the different analytical chapters of this book are discussed in greater detail.

Based on the conceptualization of democratic principles in the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2009, particularly attitudes concerning equal rights for disadvantaged groups, such as immigrants, ethnic groups and women, this chapter evaluates the extent to which the scales measuring attitudes toward gender equality, equal rights for all ethnic/racial groups and equal rights for immigrants are invariant, and to what extent they can be compared across the countries participating in the study. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis is used to estimate a measurement model of the egalitarian attitudes and its measurement equivalence across the 38 countries ( = 140,000 8th grade students) that participated in ICCS 2009. The results indicate that the original scales are non-invariant. Nevertheless, with some modifications, the proposed conceptual model was found to be invariant across countries. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and empirical implications of the model.

Schools are increasingly seen as a potential vehicle for promoting positive attitudes toward diversity and equality in different countries. However, the debate regarding the actual capacity of schools to fulfill this task, set against the role of families and individual preferences, is still open. To analyze how the characteristics of schools may shape student attitudes toward diversity in terms of gender, immigration and ethnic groups, a multilevel model that takes into consideration the characteristics of the school, such as the composition of diversity, school climate and teacher practices, and individual characteristics, such as socioeconomic background and civic interest, was used. Schools seem to have a limited leverage in promoting attitudes toward diversity, due to the fact that variance in attitudes occurs mainly within schools. The main findings are discussed in terms of research, policy and practice.

IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) identifies first- and second-generation immigrants, and hence may reveal patterns of segregation of immigrant students. From a comparative perspective, these may be analyzed to provide the distribution, concentration and spread of immigrant students among schools and countries. Here three methods of analysis were employed: (1) descriptive analysis, (2) construction of segregation indices, and (3) multilevel analysis. In general, countries do not implement systematic policies to concentrate or segregate immigrant students, although there are important differences between countries; instead there is a need to appreciate strong relationships between levels of segregation and inequality or human development indexes, and consider geographical, cultural and economic factors. Schools appear to have a limited effect in transforming attitudes toward immigration.

Past research has shown that students in schools with greater levels of open classroom discussion, have more positive attitudes toward other groups and hold more democratic attitudes. Students do not learn citizenry only by knowledge acquisition; school practices such as classroom discussion foster critical thinking, help students to understand others and reduce closed-mindedness. Students with a higher exposure to classroom discussion were hypothesized to display more tolerant attitudes to other groups and hold more egalitarian values in general. The analytical strategy in this chapter uses a three-level path analysis with support for equal rights for women, for all ethnic/racial groups and for immigrants as outcomes. Appropriate variable centering and random intercepts for schools and countries enabled relationships between classroom discussion and the outcomes to be determined. Open classroom discussion was found to be positively related to egalitarian values across all samples, accounting for 5 to 8% of school variance, depending on the outcome.

Lack of tolerance toward traditionally disadvantaged groups, such as immigrants, ethnic minorities and women, represents a growing challenge to contemporary democracies. Assuming that attitudes toward such social groups are at least partly learned during the political socialization of school-age children, this chapter explores individual differences in equal rights attitudes using data from the last International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2009 on socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of eighth grade students from 38 countries. Using structural equations and multilevel models, the analysis estimates regression models using a set of measures, with family status being the main independent variable. The results show that there are large differences across countries regarding the level of inclusive attitudes, and that parental education and the number of books at home are relevant predictors of more inclusive attitudes of children in most of the countries analyzed; however, patterns differ by gender and immigrant groups. The findings are discussed, taking into account current and future political issues associated with migration and demands for equal rights.

Each of the five empirical studies presented in this report aimed to identify factors and conditions that help schools and teachers to promote tolerance in a globalized world. Each study acknowledged the complex, hierarchical layers of explanatory mechanisms, while focusing on what could be learned from in-depth analysis of data collected by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2009. In this chapter, key findings are summarized, while acknowledging limitations and caveats, and avenues for further research are identified. The report findings also flag some potential implications for policymakers.