Despite strong debates about the role of Islamic education in Western societies, very little is known about the ways these schools can affect how Muslim children feel about these societies and themselves. This research examined how the self-esteem and national identification of Islamic schools students in a non-Muslim country (N = 707; Mage = 10.02; SD = 1.25; 56.9% girls) depend on their perceptions of religious discrimination and the student-teacher relationship, as well as their teachers’ religious background and implicit religious attitude. Children reported substantially more religious discrimination against their group than against themselves. Religious discrimination was associated with lower self-esteem and weaker national identification, whereas a close bond with the teacher was associated with higher self-esteem and stronger national identification. Children with a non-Muslim teacher reported more national identification than students with a Muslim teacher, but less so if this teacher had a comparatively positive attitude toward Muslims. Results provide insights on how self-esteem and national identification can be encouraged within the context of Islamic education.
Background. Despite the growing body of research concerning affective relationships between teachers and ethnic minority students, very little is known about studentteacher 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) (M age = 10.02 years, SD = 1.25) and their 35 teachers (85.7% female; M age = 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.The affective relationships between primary school students and their teachers have been studied with increasing interest in the last decades (Bosman, Roorda, van der Veen, & Koomen, 2018;Howes, Hamilton, & Matheson, 1994;Pianta, 1994), and there is clear evidence that students' emotional and academic adjustment is at risk when theseThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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