ethnic-diversity

PamelaInostroza/Master-s-thesis

Civic education is an important subject for every citizen in our modern society. It is important that every individual acknowledge the importance of civil rights and obligations. One of the most commented topics is how society faces and behaves towards the great diversity of individuals and cultures. Students are a great population to be studied as they are forming their own mindset and attitudes. Using ICCS 2016, an international large-scale assessment, it is possible to identify which are the most common patterns among students’ attitudes considering different aspects of equality towards women and ethnic and racial groups. As expected, the larger subpopulation is composed of students that share a high chance to accept and promote equality towards women and ethnics groups. Nonetheless, there is a number of students that tend to disagree with this equality. Another set of students shares a high level of agreement with both groups’ equal rights but disagree with their political role in society. In the case of gender equality, there is a group of students that shares a high level of agreement towards equality in basic rights but in favor of men when competing for jobs or political roles. Another pattern identified for ethnic and racial groups equality is a group of students that disagree with their equal right to have good jobs. These patterns are similar across the 14 countries studied in Europe, but they differ in the number of individuals in each pattern.