Components of positive youth development among native students and students with an immigrant background in the Slovenian educational environment

Abstract

Several studies (Fuligni, 2004;Lerner et al., 2015;Wiium & Dimitrova, 2019) show that a positive youth development model with the 5Cs (competence, confidence, character, connection, caring) effectively promotes positive aspects of adolescents' development. Adolescence is a period of accelerated physical, intellectual and emotional development that can be very stressful for the young, but even more so for young immigrants who confront several other obstacles connected to their background (e.g. discrimination, finding new friends, the language barrier etc.). The present paper examines the differences between native and immigrant students (first-and second-gene ration) within Slovenia's educational environment in self-assessed competencies, characteristics and skills based on the 5Cs of the PYD model to determine that environment's success in providing the optimal conditions for immigrant students' adaptation. Students' self-assessed competencies between the groups were analysed on the Slovenian national PISA 2018 sample using the IEA International Database Analyzer (IEA IDB Analyzer). The results reveal the Slovenian environment does not provide optimal conditions for immigrants' adaptation and detected three areas in which Slovenian students need greater support: (1) first-and second-generation immigrants' self-efficacy; (2) second-generation immigrants' connection to their family, peers and teachers; and (3) native students' attitudes toward diversity. While this paper's findings are only preliminary, they may Components of positive youth development among native students and students with an immigrant background in the Slovenian educational environment