Journal of School Psychology 50 (2012) 257273

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Journal of School Psychology

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Ethnic incongruence and the studentteacher relationship: The perspective of ethnic majority teachers
Jochem Thijs a,, Saskia Westhof a, Helma Koomen b
a b

Utrecht University, The Netherlands University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Among 36 ethnic-Dutch school teachers in the Netherlands, the present study examined the role of ethnic incongruence in perceived studentteacher relationship quality. Teachers rated their relationships with 59 Turkish-Dutch, 62 Moroccan-Dutch, and 109 ethnic-Dutch students attending grades 4 through 6 (Mage = 10.81 years, SD=1.05). On average, relationships were less favorable for the Moroccan-Dutch students only. However, the effects of ethnic incongruence were most pronounced among students with strong perceived inattention/ hyperactivity and among teachers endorsing lower levels of multiculturalism (the view that different cultures deserve equal treatment). Results support the notion that ethnically incongruent relationships may be perceived as less favorable than ethnically congruent ones due to cultural misunderstandings and intergroup bias. Practical implications are discussed. 2011 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 25 December 2010 Received in revised form 31 August 2011 Accepted 8 September 2011 Keywords: Ethnic incongruence Student-teacher relationships Teachers Culture Intergroup bias Minority students Problem behaviors Multiculturalism

1. Introduction Numerous studies in educational and developmental psychology have shown that students' interactions and relationships with their teachers are important for their academic and social adjustment, but relatively few researchers have compared studentteacher relationships for students from different ethnic groups (Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Murray, Waas, & Murray, 2008). The available studies (predominantly from the United States) suggest that the rarity of this research is quite unfortunate because the quality of student teacher relationships appears to be more important for the school adjustment of ethnic minority children compared to their majority contemporaries (Burchinal, Peisner-Feinberg, Pianta, & Howes, 2002; den
Corresponding author at: Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 2, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 30 253 5560; fax: +31 30 253 4733. E-mail address: j.t.thijs@uu.nl (J. Thijs). ACTION EDITOR: Kathy Moritz Rudasill. 0022-4405/$ see front matter 2011 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jsp.2011.09.004

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Brok, van Tartwijk, Wubbels, & Veldman, 2010; Meehan, Hughes, & Cavell, 2003; Murray et al., 2008). Furthermore, there are indications that ethnic minority students are at risk of developing less positive relationships with their teachers. Although mixed ndings have been obtained for Hispanic American students (Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Murray et al., 2008), there is a clear evidence that teachers share less close, and more dependent and conicted bonds with African American versus European American students (Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Hughes, Gleason, & Zhang, 2005). These ndings stress the need for further research into ethnic differences in studentteacher relationship quality. Additional knowledge may provide important avenues for explaining and narrowing the achievement gaps reported for some minority and migrant children in various Western countries. The present study examined ethnic-Dutch teachers' perceptions of their relationships with TurkishDutch and Moroccan-Dutch versus ethnic-Dutch children (aged 912) in the Netherlands. Due to largescale labor immigration in the 1960s, Turks and Moroccans constitute the two largest non-Western ethnic minority groups in Dutch society. They are Dutch nationals and therefore we use hyphenated labeling to refer to them (see Verkuyten & Thijs, 2010). Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch people face relatively high levels of discrimination. Moreover, they have low socioeconomic status (SES) as they experience, for instance, high levels of unemployment and poorer housing (Gijsberts & Dagevos, 2010). Several studies have also indicated that Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch students consistently do poorly in school, irrespective of how academic performance is measured (e.g., Gijsberts & Dagevos, 2010; Martens & Verweij, 1997). Most Turks and Moroccans are Muslim, and their cultures can be characterized as collectivistic (implying a relatively strong orientation and loyalty to the group) and power distant (implying respect and obedience for authority gures; see Phalet & Schnpug, 2001; Thijs, 2011). Still, there are important differences between Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands. Although both groups tend to have low status in Dutch society at large, Turks tend to be less negatively perceived than Moroccans (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2010). In particular, it has been found that teachers report more behavior problems for Moroccan-Dutch as compared to Turkish-Dutch youth (Stevens et al., 2003). In addition to this, social cohesion and family relations are notably stronger in the Turkish-Dutch as compared to the Moroccan-Dutch community, and the latter has come to be more associated with parental neglect and crime (see Crul & Vermeulen, 2003). 1.1. Teachers' perceptions of the studentteacher relationship In the present research, we relied on teachers' relationship perceptions rather than students' relationship perceptions to study ethnic differences in studentteacher relationship quality. We had two reasons to do so. First, comparisons of respondents from different ethnic groups may be affected by cultural bias (van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). For instance, studies in the Netherlands have shown stronger socially desirable response tendencies in students with a Turkish or Moroccan (versus Dutch) ethnic background (Thijs, 2011; Verkuyten, 1992). Ethnic differences in response bias cannot play a role when all respondents (in this case, teachers) share the same ethnicity. Second, as professional educators, teachers are primarily responsible for teacherstudent interactions. They are also the appropriate candidates to improve problematic relationships with minority and majority students. Any attempt at helping them do so is probably most successful if their own perspectives and experiences are taken into account (see Thijs, Koomen, & van der Leij, 2008). Following many researchers, we used the StudentTeacher Relationship Scale (STRS; Pianta, 2001) to assess teachers' perceptions of their relationships with individual students. This instrument has often been used to study studentteacher relationships in kindergarten and the lower grades, but it has been successfully used with early adolescents as well (DiLalla, Marcus, & Wright-Phillips, 2004; Koomen, Verschueren, & Pianta, 2007). The STRS measures closeness, conict, and dependency. Closeness involves the degree to which teacher and child interact and communicate in a warm, open, and positive manner, and conict and dependency refer to, respectively, the extent to which the studentteacher relationship is characterized by mutual anger and negativity and the student's overdependence on the teacher (Pianta, 2001). There are important differences between these relationship dimensions. First, closeness is a positive relationship characteristic, but conict and dependency are aspects of relational negativity. Negative studentteacher relationships appear to be closely related to students' academic adjustment (Baker, 2006; Hamre & Pianta, 2001), and teachers' active attempts to inuence students' behaviors (Thijs et al., 2008). Next, unlike the other relationship dimensions, dependency can be considered one-sided. Whereas

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closeness and conict involve teachers' perceptions of the mutual communication between relationship partners, dependency entails teachers' perceptions of the student's behaviors in the context of the student teacher relationship (see Thijs, Koomen, Roorda, & ten Hagen, 2011). 1.2. Relationship quality and ethnic incongruence It is not clear why teachers may develop less favorable interpersonal relationships with ethnic minority students. However, there is some indication that this may be partly due to ethnic incongruence in the studentteacher relationship (Howes & Shivers, 2006; Saft & Pianta, 2001). Unlike their majority counterparts, ethnic minority students relatively often have teachers from a different ethnic background (see Hughes & Kwok, 2007). Ethnic incongruence has been examined in a variety of relationships, including those between teachers and children (Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Pigott & Cowen, 2000; Saft & Pianta, 2001), children and their fellow students (Benner & Graham, 2007), school psychologists and their clients (Loe & Miranda, 2005), and supervisors and subordinates in organizations (Avey, West, & Crossley, 2008). Theoretically, there are two complementary explanations as to why ethnic incongruence could have a negative impact on the quality of the teacherstudent relationship. From a cultural perspective, ethnically incongruent relationships can involve a mutual lack of understanding between teachers and students. Culture provides guidelines for behaviors and expectations, and people in ethnically incongruent relationships may have a relatively weak understanding of each other's cultural background. This weak understanding could lead to difculties in interpersonal communication and negative interpretations of behavior (Pigott & Cowen, 2000; Saft & Pianta, 2001; van der Zee, van Oudenhoven, & de Grijs, 2004; Zimmerman, Khoury, Vega, Gil, & Warheit, 1995). Second, from an intergroup perspective, people may be biased or prejudiced when perceiving members of another ethnic group. The central assumption is that individuals make the distinction between in-groups (i.e., groups they belong to) and out-groups (e.g., groups they don't belong to) and that they favor in-group over out-group members because this selective favoring leads to positive self-esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). As a consequence, people in ethnically incongruent relationships may have less positive views of their relationship partners (Avey et al., 2008; Pigott & Cowen, 2000). Several studies have examined the effect of ethnic incongruence on teachers' judgments of their students, and these studies have yielded mixed ndings (for a review and research, see Pigott & Cowen, 2000). Yet, only two studies we know of have empirically related ethnic incongruence to teachers' perceptions of the quality of the studentteacher relationship (Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Saft & Pianta, 2001). Ewing and Taylor (2009) examined how teachers evaluated their relationships with individual children in Head Start classrooms, and they did not nd evidence for ethnic incongruence. However, the number of teachers was relatively small (n = 25), and this small sample size might have constrained the power to nd significant interactions between students' and teachers' ethnicities. By contrast, Saft and Pianta (2001) examined a larger sample of teachers in pre-school and kindergarten (n = 197). When teachers and students were different ethnicities, teachers reported relatively non-favorable (i.e., less close and more dependent and conicted) relationships. Importantly, these match effects appeared to be stronger than the main effects of teacher and child ethnicity, and they existed independently of them (Saft & Pianta, 2001). Saft and Pianta (2001) referred to knowledge of cultural and family background, shared meaning and enhanced communication, informed interpretation of behavior, and provision of role models (p. 128) in ethnically congruent studentteacher relationships, but they did not examine these or comparable factors. Convincing as it is, their study does not provide empirical explanations for the ethnic incongruence effect. The present research set out to provide empirical explanations for the ethnic incongruence effect by testing specic hypotheses about the conditions under which the effect of ethnic incongruence will be most pronounced. More specically, we examined whether majority teachers' perceptions of their relationships with ethnic minority versus ethnic majority students were related to their assessments of students' problem behaviors and students' perceptions of their multicultural attitudes. 1.3. Students' problem behavior Teachers' perceptions of the studentteacher relationship are dependent on a variety of studentand teacher-related factors, and students' problem behaviors are important among them (Birch & Ladd, 1998; Doumen et al., 2008; Hamre, Pianta, Downer, & Mashburn, 2008; Thijs & Koomen, 2009).

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Studentteacher relationships are considered dyadic systems consisting of multiple interrelated components, including the behavior of both interaction partners (Pianta, Hamre, & Stuhlman, 2003). Accordingly, students' problem behaviors may lead to negative relationship quality, not only through their interpersonal behaviors toward their teachers but also by inuencing teachers' reactions toward these behaviors. Various studies have shown that teachers experience stress when trying to manage problematic behaviors of their students (Tsouloupas, Carson, Matthews, Grawitch, & Barber, 2010), and there is evidence that this stress is related to teachers' perceptions of sharing negative relationships with them (Yoon, 2002). Apart from being a direct source of negative relationship quality, students' problem behavior may also amplify differences in teachers' relationships with students from different versus similar ethnic backgrounds. In ethnically incongruent relationships, there is stronger potential for misunderstanding and miscommunication, and research on intercultural encounters suggests that this potential is likely to be realized under stressful circumstances (van der Zee et al., 2004). Interacting with difcult students can be stressful, and how teachers react to these students, and how they subsequently interpret and evaluate their interactions with them, likely depends on whether they have a shared ethnic background. To our knowledge, no studies have tested this expectation. Yet, preliminary support comes from an observational study on interactions between caregivers and children in primary care. Howes and Shivers (2006) found that children were less securely attached to their primary childcare caregivers when they had different ethnic backgrounds. However, this predominantly held for those children with whom they had conictual interactions (Howes & Shivers, 2006). In the present research, we included teachers' assessments of two types of problem behaviors that present teachers with fairly different challenges: hyperactivity/inattention and emotional problems (see Goodman, 1997). Hyperactivity/inattention can be regarded as an externalizing problem (Goodman, 2001; Hinshaw, 1992), and it involves restless and off-task behaviors that teachers perceive as disruptive and stressful and try to control and regulate (see Greene, Beszterczey, Katzenstein, Park, & Goring, 2002). We focused on hyperactivity/inattention rather than hostility and aggression which are presumably more typical externalizing problems because teachers' perceptions of studentteacher conict and child conduct problems are hard to distinguish (Palermo, Hanish, Martin, Fabes, & Reiser, 2007; Silver, Measelle, Armstrong, & Essex, 2005). Unlike hyperactivity/inattention, emotional problems are of an internalizing nature. They include fear, worries, and somatic complaints, and rather than being bothersome for teachers, they rst and foremost impede the child (Brophy & McCaslin, 1992; Thijs et al., 2008). We hypothesized that ethnic-Dutch teachers would have less favorable perceptions of ethnically incongruent versus ethnically congruent relationships when they perceived more problem behaviors in their students. Given its toll on teachers, we expected this to be particularly pronounced for hyperactivity/inattention. 1.4. Teachers' multicultural attitudes Teachers' evaluations of relationships with ethnically dissimilar students may not only depend on students' misbehaviors and the resulting potential for cultural miscommunication but also on their personal attitudes and individual preferences. Whether teachers are biased in their perceptions of ethnic minority versus majority students has been an important question in educational and social psychological research. For instance, many studies have included examinations of teachers' expectations toward students from different ethnic groups, and the overall conclusion is that teachers hold lower expectations for African American and Latino/a versus European American students (see for a meta-analysis, Tenenbaum & Ruck, 2007). Likewise, there are indications that teachers sometimes provide biased ratings of minority (versus majority) students' behaviors (see Hosterman, DuPaul, & Jitendra, 2008) and also that they make less favorable (i.e. more internal) attributions for the problems experienced by those children (Jackson, 2002). Studies on individual differences in teacher bias have been relatively scarce. Recently, however, van den Bergh, Denessen, Hornstra, Voeten, and Holland (2010) related teachers' personal ethnic attitudes to their differential expectations of ethnic minority versus majority students. Those differential expectations and the resulting ethnic achievement gap were found to be predicted by teachers' prejudice. However, this nding only held when prejudice was measured in an implicit manner, which can be explained by the notion that self-reports of explicit prejudice are biased by self-presentation and social desirability considerations (van den Bergh et al., 2010). In the present study, we tried to explain teachers' differential relationship perceptions by taking their multicultural attitudes into account. To rule out the possibility

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of self-presentational bias, we relied on students' rather than teachers' reports of the teachers' endorsement of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is an inuential belief in many Western countries that pertains to the treatment of cultural diversity in a multicultural society. It insists that all cultural groups should be treated with respect and as equals. In principle, multiculturalism stresses the importance of appreciation for all cultures and ethnicities. However, its main focus is on respect and tolerance for ethnic minorities (van Oudenhoven, Prins, & Buunk, 1998), and it is related to more positive out-group attitudes or less in-group preference in majority group members (Verkuyten, 2005; Wolsko, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2000). Hence, we expected that ethnic-Dutch teachers endorsing higher (versus lower) levels of multiculturalism have a weaker (versus stronger) inclination to perceive their relationships with Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch versus ethnic-Dutch students in negative terms. 1.5. Goal of study The goal of the present study was to examine ethnic majority teachers' perceptions of their relationships with ethnic minority versus ethnic majority students in a non-American setting. We focused on ethnic-Dutch teachers in relation to Turkish-Dutch, Moroccan-Dutch, and ethnic-Dutch pre-adolescents. We evaluated three hypotheses which were based on the notion of ethnic incongruence between teachers and students. First, we examined the general expectation that teachers reported less favorable (i.e., more dependent, more conicted, and less close) relationships with minority as compared to majority students. Given previous research on evaluations of Moroccans in the Netherlands (Stevens et al., 2003; Verkuyten & Thijs, 2010) these relationship differences were expected to be most evident for the Moroccan-Dutch group. Next, we tested the hypothesis that the anticipated relationship differences for minority versus majority students would be largest when students were perceived to have more behavior problems, especially those of an externalizing nature. Thus, unlike previous research (e.g., Hosterman et al., 2008), we did not examine ethnic differences in teacher-rated problem behaviors, but we investigated whether teachers reported different relationships for different ethnicities given equally strong perceptions of those behaviors. Finally, we expected that ethnic differences in teacher-reported relationship quality would be most pronounced when teachers were perceived to have weaker versus stronger multicultural attitudes. Before evaluating these hypotheses, we examined the roles of three potentially confounding variables. Studies using the STRS have demonstrated that teachers report more favorable relationships with girls versus boys (e.g., Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Kesner, 2000), and this nding could be due to the teacherstudent gender match (Ewing & Taylor, 2009). Hence, we examined student and teacher gender as well as the interaction between them. In addition, and despite its limited range (913 years), we explored the role of student age. Early adolescence is the time of developmental and interpersonal changes that could affect the teacher's role and expectations (see Ang, Chong, Huan, Quek, & Yeo, 2008). 2. Method 2.1. Participants and procedure Data were collected within a larger research project which also focused on the social determinants of helping behaviors in Turkish-Dutch versus ethnic-Dutch students (see Sierksma, Thijs, & Verkuyten, 2011). Originally, participants included 44 teachers of grades 4 through 6 and their students; these participants were drawn from 16 regular elementary schools in different parts of the Netherlands (with one to six teachers per school participating). A total of 36 of the teachers were ethnically Dutch, 6 were SurinameseDutch, and 2 were Turkish-Dutch. For the present investigation, only the ethnic-Dutch teachers (12 men and 24 women) were included. Their average teaching experience was 14.44 years (SD = 10.86), and most of them (80.6%) worked 3 days a week or more (Mdays = 4.06, SD = 1.27). It is quite common for Dutch teachers to work part-time due to job sharing (see Koomen et al., 2007). Our study required teachers to evaluate a small and ethnically diverse number of their students. To avoid overly explicit comparisons in the teachers' evaluations of ethnic minority in comparison to ethnic-Dutch children, we stressed our broader research aim to examine social determinants of helping behaviors in

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children from different ethnic backgrounds. Before the evaluation form was handed to the participating teachers, they were asked to report the ethnicity of all the students in their class. The researchers used this information to select eight children per classroom. Teachers were asked to complete the form as seriously and honestly as possible, while the children anonymously and voluntarily lled out questionnaires in the classroom. If needed, teachers could take extra time to complete the form and mail it back to the researchers. The original aim of the larger project was to compare equal numbers of Turkish-Dutch and ethnicDutch students. However, many of the classrooms either predominantly contained ethnic-Dutch students, or they were very ethnically diverse, which meant that there was only a limited pool of Turkish-Dutch children to be selected. Thus, the selection was carefully designed so that, if possible, up to six TurkishDutch children and a minimum of two ethnic-Dutch children were chosen from each class. However, if less than four Turkish-Dutch children could be selected, the rest of the eight selected students consisted of a preferable minimum of four ethnic-Dutch children, followed by Moroccan-Dutch children (as a rst alternative), Surinamese-Dutch children (as a second alternative) or other non-Western minority children (as a third alternative). The researchers selected approximately equal numbers of boys and girls in each classroom, independent of students' ethnicity. Ultimately, the 36 teachers could be examined in relation to 230 students (a mean number of 6.39 per teacher, SD = 1.48). Of these students, 59 were Turkish-Dutch, 62 were Moroccan-Dutch, and 109 were ethnic-Dutch. Gender and age were equally distributed (p N .10) across these three groups. The mean age of these 230 students was 10.81 years (SD = 1.05), and 50.4% were girls.

2.2. Measures 2.2.1. Studentteacher relationship Teachers' perceptions of their relationships with each of the selected children were assessed with the ofcial Dutch adaptation of the StudentTeacher Relationship Scale (Koomen et al., 2007). Like the original instrument (STRS, Pianta, 2001), the Dutch version contains subscales measuring closeness, dependency, and conict. However, in the adapted STRS, the Dependency scale was altered because of its mediocre internal consistency in previous research with the original STRS (e.g., = .53.74; DiLalla et al., 2004; Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Hamre & Pianta, 2001). In addition, based on conrmatory factor analyses in two large (n N 1100) samples in the Netherlands (Koomen et al., 2007), three original STRS items were removed from the Closeness scale (This child spontaneously shares information about himself/herself and I've noticed this child copying my behavior or ways of doing things) and the Conict scale (When this child is misbehaving, he/she responds well to my look or tone of voice (reverse-coded)), and two new Closeness scale items (This child allows himself/herself to be encouraged by me and This child seems to feel secure with me) were added to the Dutch version. Closeness refers to the amount of warmth and open communication in the studentteacher relationship. The Dutch version used in this study consists of 11 items including This child openly shares his/her feelings and experiences with me and I share an affectionate, warm relationship with this child. Conict contains 11 items and captures the extent to which the studentteacher relationship is characterized by mutual anger and negativity. Sample items of Conict are This child easily becomes angry with me and Dealing with this child drains my energy. Dependency denotes children's overdependence on the teacher and has six items such as This child needs to be continually conrmed by me and This child expresses hurt or jealousy when I spend time with other children. All items are scored on a 5point Likert scale ranging from 1 (denitely does not apply) to 5 (denitely applies). Sufcient to good psychometric properties have been reported for both the original STRS (Pianta, 2001) and its Dutch adaption, including a clear three-factor structure, satisfactory internal consistency scores, and validity in relation to observed relationship quality, teacher stress indices, children's socialemotional functioning, and children's behavioral engagement (Koomen et al., 2007; Pianta, 2001). Moreover, research with the Dutch adapted version extended the age range of the original STRS by conrming the three-factor structure and showing sufcient reliability for all scales among 3- to 12-year-olds (Koomen et al., 2007). In the present sample, Cronbach's was .89 for Closeness, .85 for Dependency, and .92 for Conict.

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2.2.2. Child behavior Teachers' appraisals of children's behavior were assessed with the two subscales from the Dutch teacher version of the Strengths and Difculties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997). The SDQ is a brief, widely used screening and research instrument addressing both negative and positive aspects of behavior. It includes parent-report, teacher-report, and self-report (i.e., child-completed) forms. These different forms across the original and Dutch versions are supported by good psychometric qualities, including good internal consistencies, satisfactory cross-informant correlations, and concurrent validity evidence (Goodman, 2001; Muris, Meesters, & van den Berg, 2003; van Widenfelt, Goedhart, Treffers, & Goodman, 2003). The SDQ contains subscales measuring inattention/hyperactivity, emotional problems, conduct problems, peer problems, and prosocial behavior. To minimize the burden of data collection for the teachers, we only used the Inattention/Hyperactivity scale and the Emotional Problems scale. Whereas the former is considered to be measure of externalizing problems, emotional problems are considered to have an internalizing nature (Goodman, 1997). The Inattention/Hyperactivity scale consists of ve items, including Restless, overactive, cannot stay still for long and Constantly dgeting or squirming. Emotional problems also consists of ve items, including Many worries or often seems worried and Many fears, easily scared. For both subscales, items had a 5-point Likert response-scale ranging from 1 (denitely does not apply) to 5 (denitely applies). Cronbach's was .86 for Inattention/Hyperactivity and .85 for Emotional Problems. 2.2.3. Teachers' multicultural attitudes Three items were used to measure student perceptions of teachers' multicultural attitudes: Does your teacher ever say that all cultures should be respected?, Does your teacher ever say that it is wrong to discriminate?, and Does your teacher ever say that people from all cultures are equal? The response scale ranged from 1 (absolutely never!) to 5 (very often!). To make a reliable assessment, these questions were anonymously asked to all children in the 36 classrooms from which the 230 students were selected (n = 579). These three questions yielded a Cronbach's of .68 (and .70) for the ethnic-Dutch students (n = 109), .72 for the Turkish-Dutch students (n = 59), and .70 for the Moroccan-Dutch students (n = 62). That is, we calculated the mean score for each individual student, and averaged these mean scores across all students in the classroom (i.e., those sharing the same teacher). Scores on the aggregated measure ranged from 1.84 to 3.98 (M = 2.79, SD = .46, n = 36). Two kinds of reliability were calculated for the teacher-level measure. First, we aggregated the three original items at the classroom level, and computed Cronbach's for the 36 classrooms, which was .82. Second, we calculated the reliability coefcient suggested by O'Brien (1998), which indicates the extent to which the mean scores for individual students can be regarded as parallel items of the aggregated measure. This reliability coefcient was sufcient, r = .76. Thus, the three items yielded an internally consistent scale, and students agreed on the multicultural attitudes of their teacher. Previous research among early adolescents has yielded initial support for the validity of this measure for students' aggregated perceptions of their teacher's multicultural attitudes. Recently, Thijs and Verkuyten (submitted for publication) found that it was negatively related to ethnic-Dutch students' tendency to prefer Dutch people over Turks and Moroccans, and research using a highly comparable teacher-level measure in 182 classrooms (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2002) yielded evidence for a small to medium positive correlation with teachers' self-reported multicultural practices, r = .20, (p b .01; see Cohen, 1988). 2.3. Analyses Because each teacher provided relationship and behavior reports for more than one student, data for individual students were not independently collected. Analyzing dependent data with conventional statistical tests could lead to an underestimation of standard errors and hence to spuriously signicant results (Snijders & Bosker, 1999). To prevent this, multilevel analyses were conducted. Multilevel analysis corrects for dependencies between observations nested within the same units, including measurements within persons (cf., Thijs et al., 2008). Moreover, it can handle variable numbers of observations per unit (Snijders & Bosker, 1999). Multilevel regression models were analyzed with MLwiN version 2.0 (Rasbash, Browne, Healy, Cameron, & Charlton, 2004). Two levels were specied: Level 1 pertaining to

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the individual children reported on by each teacher (n = 230) and Level 2 pertaining to each teacher (n = 36). Although teachers were nested in schools, we did not include a third school level representing the school because the teacher and school levels were partly confounded; a total of 5 of the 16 schools were represented by only one (ethnic-Dutch) teacher. All models were estimated using the Iterative Generalized Least Squares algorithm, which is equivalent to maximum likelihood under normality, and relative model improvement was assessed by comparing the t of nested models (Snijders & Bosker, 1999). In the multilevel analyses, the continuous measures were standardized (i.e., transformed into z-scores) at the appropriate level. Thus, the STRS and SDQ subscales were standardized at Level 1 (n = 230), and teachers' multicultural attitudes were standardized at Level 2 (n = 36). In addition, two dummy variables were constructed: Turkish-Dutch (coded 1 for the Turkish-Dutch students and 0 for the other students) and Moroccan-Dutch (coded 1 for the Moroccan-Dutch students and 0 for the other students). When included together these variables represented the differences between Turkish-Dutch and ethnicDutch students, and Moroccan-Dutch and ethnic-Dutch students. 3. Results 3.1. Preliminary results Before testing our hypotheses, we performed three sets of preliminary analyses. First, we inspected the correlations between teachers' ratings of children's behavior and studentteacher relationship quality (shown in the left part of Table 1). The Inattention/Hyperactivity and Emotional Problems scales were positively related to the Conict and Dependency scales (the two negative relationship measures), and Inattention/Hyperactivity was also negatively related to the Closeness scale. These relations were in line with our assumption that perceived problem behavior is a source of negative relationship quality. Second, we examined whether there were systematic differences between teachers on all variables in Table 1. To this aim, intercept-only models were specied in MLwiN. These models yield estimates of the intraclass correlation coefcient (ICC), which represents the proportion of total variance at Level 2 (between teachers; see Snijders & Bosker, 1999). As shown in the far right column of Table 1, the ICCs were statistically signicant for all measures except Conict. This result means that some teachers systematically provided different ratings on children's behavior and different ratings on Dependency and Closeness than others. Note that the lack of between-teacher variance for Conict only applies to the present sample. Due to our selection of a limited number of children, the conclusion that teachers generally do not differ in their perceptions of Conict is unwarranted. Third, we examined the effects of the control variables student gender and teacher gender (contrasts coded .5 for females and .5 for males) as well as student age (a continuous variable). We added these measures as predictors to the intercept-only models. There was only one statistically signicant effect; teachers reported closer relationships for girls versus boys, = .39, p = .002. We also examined the effect of gender match by adding the interaction between the dummy variables for student gender and teacher gender. These interactions were not signicant. In our main analyses, we included only student gender as a control variable and only so for the prediction of Closeness.

Table 1 Intercorrelations, means, and standard-deviations for all continuous variables. Total (n = 230) Variable 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Inattention/Hyperactivity Emotional problems Closeness Conict Dependency 1 .34** .25** .61** .45*** 2 3 4 M (SD) 2.24 1.93 3.77 1.69 1.97 (1.00) (0.96) (0.66) (0.83) (0.84) ICC .12** .27** .15** .04 .26**

.12 .31** .50**

.41** .09

.46**

Note. **p b .01.

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3.2. Main ethnic differences To examine whether teachers reported different levels of conict, closeness, and dependency in relationships with Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch students as compared to ethnic-Dutch students, three multilevel models were estimated in which each relationship variable was regressed on the two dummy variables representing the ethnic group differences. In the model for Closeness, student gender was included as a predictor as well. The relative t of each model was assessed by comparing its deviance statistic (see Table 2) to the deviance statistic in a corresponding model without the ethnic group dummy variables. Differences between these statistics follow a Chi-square distribution, and degrees of freedom are given by the differences in numbers of parameters (Snijders & Bosker, 1999). Results are shown in Table 2. For Closeness, model improvement was only marginally signicant, 2(2) = 5.87, p = .053. Teachers reported similar levels of closeness for the ethnic-Dutch as compared to the Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch students. Yet, an additional analysis (in which we replaced the dummy variable Turkish-Dutch with a dummy variable for the ethnic-Dutch) revealed that teachers perceived relationships with Turkish-Dutch students to be closer than with Moroccan-Dutch students (mean intercepts: 00 = .15, versus 00 = .25, p = .018). Next, model improvement was signicant for Conict and Dependency, 2(2) = 16.34, p b .001, and 2(2) = 6.70, p = .035, respectively. Teachers reported more conicted and dependent relationships for the Moroccan-Dutch as compared to the ethnic-Dutch students (00 = .38 versus 00 = .02, p = .011, and 00 = .28 versus 00 = .08, p = .033, respectively) but less conicted relationships with the Turkish-Dutch students (00 = .33, p = .047). Together these ethnic differences accounted for a small to moderate portion (2.0% to 6.9%) of the variance of teachers' relationship ratings (see Cohen, 1988). 3.3. Problem behavior and teacher attitudes Next, we examined the role of teachers' perceptions of students' problem behaviors as well as teachers' multicultural attitudes as perceived by students. First, we examined the unique main effects of these standardized predictors by adding them to the previous regression equations (Step 1 in Table 2). These effects are shown in the upper half of Table 3 (Step 2). Including them led to a signicant improvement of the model t for Closeness, 2(3) = 9.19, p = .027, Conict, 2(3) = 106.28, p b .001, and Dependency, 2(3) = 89.19, p b .001. Paralleling the correlations in Table 1, there were signicant main effects of Inattention/Hyperactivity for Closeness, Conict, and Dependency, and of Emotional Problems for Conict and Dependency. Thus, teachers reported less positive relationships when students were perceived to have more problem behaviors, independent of mean relationship differences between the three ethnic groups. There was no main effect of teachers' Multicultural Attitudes. To examine whether the ethnic differences in teacher-perceived relationship quality were related to students' perceived problem behaviors as well as teachers' perceived multicultural attitudes, we

Table 2 Multilevel effects of students' ethnic background. Predictors Step 1 Turkish-Dutch (versus ethnic-Dutch; Level 1) Moroccan-Dutch (versus ethnic-Dutch; Level 1) Student gender (control variable; Level 1) Variance Level 1 (student) Level 2 (teacher) Total (% explaineda) Deviance Closeness .11 .29 .37 .789 .144 .933 (4.1%) 625.775 Conict .31 .40 .900 .027 .927 (6.9%) 634.619 Dependency .02 .36 .710 .261 .971 (2.0%) 617.079

Note. Relationship measures are standardized (z-scores). p b .05. p b .01. a This percentage involves the reduction in total variance compared to the model not including the ethnic group dummies.

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Table 3 Main and interaction effects of problem behaviors, and multicultural attitudes. Predictors Step 2: main effects Inattention/Hyperactivity (IH; Level 1) Emotional problems (EP; Level 1) Multicultural attitudes (MA; Level 2) Variance Level 1 (student) Level 2 (teacher) Deviance Step 3: interactions IH Turkish-Dutch EP Turkish-Dutch MA Turkish-Dutch IH Moroccan-Dutch EP Moroccan-Dutch MA Moroccan-Dutch Variance Level 1 (student) Level 2 (teacher) Deviance Closeness .16 .06 .08 .773 .110 616.589 .20 .09 .14 .03 .36 .38 .722 .135 605.747 Conict .55 .15 .06 .577 .005 528.343 .16 .03 .05 .11 .05 .23 .561 .007 522.243 Dependency .29 .41 .00 .502 .124 527.894 .45 .06 .19 .39 .11 18 .471 .102 510.397

Note. Continuous measures are standardized (z-scores). IH = inattention/hyperactivity; EP = emotional problems; and MA = multicultural attitudes. p b .05. p b .01.

calculated the interactions between these measures and the two dummy variables comparing TurkishDutch to ethnic-Dutch students and Moroccan-Dutch to ethnic-Dutch students. The effects of these six interactions are shown in the lower half of Table 3 (Step 3). For Closeness, overall model improvement was only marginally signicant, 2(6) = 10.84, p = .093. Yet, there was a signicant interaction between the dummy for Moroccan-Dutch students and teachers' perceptions of emotional problems. Model improvement was not signicant for Conict, but it was signicant for Dependency, 2(3) = 17.50, p = .008. For the latter, the dummy variables Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch interacted with Inattention/Hyperactivity. To examine the nature of these interactions, we conducted a set of simple slope analyses in MLwiN. Following the procedure suggested by Aiken and West (1991), we calculated the size of the ethnic differences (i.e., the slopes of the dummy variables) under conditions of both low and high levels of perceived problem behavior (i.e., one standard deviation below and one standard deviation above the mean, respectively). These effects are shown in Fig. 1 (for Closeness) and Fig. 2 (for Dependency). When Moroccan-Dutch students were
0.50

Closeness

0.00
Turkish-Dutch Moroccan-Dutch Ethnic Dutch

-0.50

-1.00

Low (- 1 SD)

High (+ 1 SD)

Emotional Problems
Fig. 1. Ethnic differences in closeness at low versus high levels of emotional problems (EP).

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1.00

Dependency

0.50
Turkish-Dutch Moroccan-Dutch Ethnic Dutch

0.00

-0.50

Low (- 1 SD)

High (+ 1 SD)

Inattention/Hyperactivity
Fig. 2. Ethnic differences in dependency at low versus high levels of inattention/hyperactivity (IH).

perceived to have few emotional problems, teachers rated their relationships with them as less close than their relationships with ethnic-Dutch students ( = .69, p = .003, for the dummy variable MoroccanDutch). However, when many emotional problems were perceived the difference in closeness was not signicant ( = .02). For Dependency, there was no signicant difference between Turkish-Dutch versus ethnic-Dutch or Moroccan-Dutch versus ethnic-Dutch when students' Inattention/Hyperactivity was perceived to be low, = .13, for the dummy variable Turkish-Dutch, and = .04, for the dummy variable Moroccan-Dutch. However, when Inattention/Hyperactivity was perceived to be high, these differences were positive and signicant, = .77, p = .001, and = .74, p b .001, respectively. For Closeness, there was also a signicant interaction between teachers' Multicultural Attitudes and the negative difference between Moroccan-Dutch versus ethnic-Dutch students. Simple slope analyses (see Fig. 3) revealed that this difference was signicant for teachers with weak multicultural attitudes (one standard deviation below the teacher mean; = .72, p = .004, for the dummy variable MoroccanDutch) but not for teachers with strong multicultural attitudes (one standard deviation above the teacher mean; = .04, for the dummy variable Moroccan-Dutch). 4. Discussion The present research adds to the emerging literature on ethnic differences in studentteacher relationships, and it makes a unique contribution by studying teachers' perceptions of these relationships in a non-American context. We examined ethnic-Dutch teachers in relation to Turkish-Dutch, MoroccanDutch, and ethnic-Dutch early adolescents, and we focused on the relationship dimensions of closeness,
0.50

Closeness

0.00
Turkish-Dutch Moroccan-Dutch Ethnic Dutch

-0.50

-1.00

Weak (- 1 SD)

Strong (+ 1SD)

Multicultural Attitudes
Fig. 3. Ethnic differences in closeness for teachers with weak versus strong multicultural attitudes.

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conict, and dependency. Three main hypotheses were evaluated. First, based on the notion of ethnic incongruence, we anticipated that the ethnic-Dutch (majority) teachers would report less favorable (i.e., more dependent and conicted, and less close) relationships with the Turkish-Dutch and MoroccanDutch (minority) students as compared to the ethnic-Dutch (majority) students. However, based upon previous studies on evaluations of Moroccans in the Netherlands (Stevens et al., 2003; Verkuyten & Thijs, 2010) these relationship differences were expected to be most pronounced for the MoroccanDutch group. This hypothesis received partial conrmation. Although teachers perceived equal levels of closeness in their relationships with Moroccan- versus ethnic-Dutch students, they perceived more conict and also more dependency in these relationships. As anticipated, teachers also regarded their bonds with Turkish-Dutch students as closer, less dependent, and less conicted than their relationships with the Moroccan-Dutch students. Yet, teachers reported equal levels of closeness and dependency for the Turkish- versus ethnic-Dutch students, and even less conict for the former. Thus, on average, ethnicDutch teachers' self-reported relationships with Turkish-Dutch students were not comparatively unfavorable. Like previous ndings in the United States (see Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Hughes et al., 2005; Murray et al., 2008) these results stress the need to go beyond simple majorityminority distinctions and to recognize the distinctions between ethnic minority groups when examining ethnic differences in studentteacher relationship quality. Our second and third hypotheses pertained to the conditions under which the effect of ethnic incongruence would be most pronounced. To begin with, we expected that relationship differences for minority versus majority students would be largest when students were perceived to have more behavior problems, especially when these behaviors were of an externalizing nature. Thus, assuming that interactions with students displaying such difcult behaviors can increase the risk of intercultural miscommunication (van der Zee et al., 2004), we predicted that teachers would report less favorable relationships for minority versus majority students the more inattention and hyperactivity problems they perceived. This prediction was fully supported for teachers' perceptions of dependency but not conrmed for the other relationship dimensions; no ethnic differences were found for students perceived to have few inattention and hyperactivity problems, but teachers perceived more dependency in their relationships with Moroccan-Dutch and Turkish-Dutch (versus ethnic-Dutch) students for whom they reported more of these problems. Presumably, teachers had more difculties handling these problems when students had another ethnic background, leading to negative perceptions of their relationships with these children. Consistent with the general notion that internalizing behaviors are perceived as less disturbing and irritating than externalizing ones (Thijs & Koomen, 2009), teachers' perceptions of students' emotional problems were not associated with stronger negative effects of ethnic incongruence. On the contrary, more perceived emotional problems were related to a smaller effect of ethnic incongruence on closeness experienced by teachers in relationships with Moroccan-Dutch students as compared to ethnic-Dutch students. We do not have a clear-cut explanation for this unexpected nding. However, one tentative suggestion can be made. Although emotional problems could hinder children's formation and maintenance of warm and intimate relationships with their teachers (Thijs & Koomen, 2009), they may also elicit sympathetic reactions and support from teachers (Brophy & McCaslin, 1992; Thijs et al., 2008). Ethnic-Dutch teachers may have relatively distant relationships with Moroccan-Dutch children who do not need their emotional support, but it may be emotionally rewarding to invest in these relationships when children do appeal to their capacity to help and comfort them. Further research is needed to test this interpretation. However, it is consistent with the notion that the closeness dimension partly involves students' condence in emotional support from their teachers (Koomen et al., 2007; Pianta, 2001). Our third hypothesis involved the moderating role of teachers' multicultural attitudes. To rule out the inuence of social desirability considerations, these attitudes were assessed through students' reports (see van den Bergh et al., 2010). We expected that ethnic differences in teachers' relationship perceptions were strongest for those teachers perceived to have weak multicultural attitudes. This expectation was upheld but only for perceptions of closeness in teachers' relationships with Moroccan-Dutch versus ethnic-Dutch students. Teachers who were seldom observed to express the view that different cultures deserve equal treatment reported lower levels of closeness with the Moroccan-Dutch students, but this difference was absent for teachers who often articulated this view. Again these ndings are consistent with previous research demonstrating differential evaluations of ethnic minority groups among majority group members in the Netherlands (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2010).

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An important question is why our second and third hypotheses were conrmed for specic relationship dimensions. Our nding that teachers' ratings of inattention and hyperactivity problems were associated with a stronger incongruence effect for only dependency may well have to do with the one-sided focus of this dimension. Our assumption was that stressful interactions with students (e.g., due to restless and off-task behaviors) could cause intercultural miscommunication and make teachers vulnerable to misinterpretations of the behaviors of other-ethnic versus same-ethnic children. Unlike closeness and conict, dependency exclusively entails teachers' interpretations of students' behaviors (see Thijs et al., 2011) and, in hindsight, it is understandable that the assumed effects of intercultural miscommunication emerged for that relationship dimension in particular. By contrast, closeness and conict also involve the teachers' own contributions to the studentteacher relationship, including for instance their ability to be in tune with the child's feelings and their attempts to get along with the child. Even in the case of cultural misunderstandings, teachers may still be willing to invest in ethnically incongruent relationships with students. In addition to this, being oriented toward one's teacher may have different meanings for the ethnic groups in our sample. Unlike Dutch culture, Turkish and Moroccan cultures can be characterized as power distant, which means that authority gures are valued and obeyed, and that parents and teachers are expected to tell young people what they should do (see Phalet & Schnpug, 2001). Recent research has shown that Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch students have a stronger tendency than their ethnic-Dutch contemporaries to rely on their teacher for academic help and to work hard in order to please them (Thijs, 2011). This stronger teacher orientation does not necessarily indicate the developmentally inappropriate dependency (Pianta et al., 2003, p. 216) measured by the STRS Dependency scale. Yet, it may be regarded as overly dependent and clingy by ethnic-Dutch teachers. Next, the nding that teachers' individual multicultural attitudes were associated with their differential perceptions of closeness only seems to reect the so-called positivenegative asymmetry of social discrimination. The positivenegative asymmetry involves the tendency to show in-group favoritism (i.e., a preference for one's own group over other groups) on positive but not on negative dimensions (Mummendey & Otten, 1998). To the extent that ethnic-Dutch teachers with weak multicultural attitudes were more prone to display in-group preference, they did so on the positive relationship dimension (i.e., closeness) but not on the negative ones (i.e., conict and dependency). In addition, it should be noted that closeness probably most strongly reects teachers' personal evaluations of interactions with their students. For instance, recent research among kindergarten teachers has shown that teachers' ratings of closeness but not dependency or conict were uniquely affected by their own attributions (or subjective explanations) of children's social behaviors (Thijs & Koomen, 2009). Given the demonstrated importance of teachers' relationship reports for the emotional and academic adjustments of their students, it is worthwhile to consider the practical implications of this study. Our ndings provide some starting points for attempts to improve ethnic majority teachers' relationships with ethnic minority students. However, taking the relationships with ethnic-Dutch students as a baseline, it should be noted that the need for improvement seems to be evident for the Moroccan-Dutch students only. First, teachers should be made aware of the conditions which enlarge or diminish the effects of cultural differences. The teachers in our sample were not instructed to compare their relationships with students from different ethnic groups. Thus, our ndings concerning the moderating role of inattention- and hyperactivity problems do not automatically imply that teachers attribute ethnic relationship differences to problems in intercultural communication. Second, schools could probably invest more in the intercultural competence of their teachers. Intercultural competence involves the ability to adopt other cultures' perspectives and attend to cultural differences and similarities, and research among teachers has shown that it can be trained and developed (DeJaeghere & Cao, 2009). In addition, it seems important that teachers learn to view cultural diversity positively. Teachers' personal attitudes toward multiculturalism might be difcult to change. Still, attempts to change these attitudes are necessary as positive and warm relationships between students and teachers benet both students and teachers. For instance, Koomen et al. (2007) reported signicant negative correlations between relationship closeness and several aspects of teaching stress (e.g., feelings of incompetence and loss of satisfaction from teaching). Investing in teachers' intercultural competence may also increase teachers' appreciation for ethnic diversity. Being interculturally competent means that one acknowledges the presence of cultural differences (Hammer, Bennett, & Wiseman, 2003), and this acknowledgment can be regarded as a precondition for positive multicultural attitudes.

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4.1. Limitations There were several limitations to this study. First, like ethnic minorities in other Western countries, Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands occupy low SES positions (Gijsberts & Dagevos, 2010), but no information was available about the SES of the participating students. Future attempts to replicate our ndings should include measures of SES to address its confound with ethnic minority status. Still, we have reason to believe that the impact of this confound was limited in the present sample. In the Netherlands, parents are free to choose a school for their children. As higher educated parents tend to select schools with few non-Western minority students, ethnic Dutch students in schools with a higher percentage of ethnic minority students may have low SES as well (see Jongejan & Thijs, 2010; Vogels & BronnemanHelmers, 2003). Forty percent of the ethnic-Dutch students in our sample attended classrooms with more than one third of the students having nonethnic-Dutch parents. Second, our analyses were based on cross-sectional data. Students' problem behaviors and teachers' multicultural attitudes were examined as predictors of relationship ratings but the possibility of reciprocal inuences should be acknowledged. Still, our analyses were consistent with our theoretically-based predictions. A third limitation involves the choice of our measures to understand the effects of ethnic incongruence. We assessed teachers' multicultural attitudes with an indirect measure that needs some more validation. Thus, our nding involving these attitudes should be regarded with care and needs to be replicated with existing validated measures. Next, as studentteacher conict and child conduct problems demonstrate low distinctiveness (Palermo et al., 2007; Silver et al., 2005), we did not include a measure for hostility and aggression. However, this low distinctiveness was not demonstrated for the present sample, and by including a distinguishable measure, we might have got a better understanding of ethnic differences in conict which were left unexplained in our analyses. Related to this point, future research should examine other explanatory factors such as the involvement of students' parents. Recent studies have revealed positive links between teachers' ratings of parental involvement and the quality of the teacherchild relationship (Dearing, Kreider, & Weiss, 2008; Hughes et al., 2005; Wyrick & Rudasill, 2009), and Dutch research suggests that there are important ethnic differences in the former (Denessen, Driessen, Smit, & Sleegers, 2001). Fourth, our study took place in the Netherlands. Most of the available research on ethnic differences in teacherstudent relationships has been conducted in the United States, and it is important that other national contexts are examined as well. Still, it remains to be veried whether our results generalize to teachers in other countries. We think that generalization is highly likely, because the Dutch educational system is comparable to that in other western countries. However, more research is needed to conrm this impression. Finally, our study examined ethnic incongruence in relationships involving ethnicDutch majority teachers only. This means that, unlike in previous research (e.g., Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Saft & Pianta, 2001), student ethnicity and ethnic incongruence were confounded. Still, it is not plausible that the present conclusions only pertain to students' ethnicity in isolation and not to their ethnicity in combination with the Dutch ethnicity of their teachers. It is highly unlikely, for instance, that teachers with weak multicultural attitudes report less close relationships for Moroccan-Dutch as compared to ethnic-Dutch students when they are Moroccan-Dutch themselves as well. At present, most of the workforce in the Dutch educational system is ethnic-Dutch (as in our sample) but the number of ethnic minority teachers will probably increase in the future. Whether ethnic incongruence works out similarly for them is an important question for future studies.

4.2. Conclusion The studentteacher relationship is important for students' school adjustment, and it is imperative to examine the factors that may inuence its quality. The present study showed that ethnic incongruence is one of these factors. On average, ethnic-Dutch teachers reported less favorable relationships for the Moroccan-Dutch children only. However, ethnic differences were more pronounced among students with strong perceived inattention/hyperactivity problems and among teachers with weak multicultural attitudes. Cultural misunderstandings and intergroup bias seem to play an important role. Future research should attempt to replicate our ndings and use them to develop interventions for promoting equally favorable studentteacher relationships in different ethnic groups.

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Acknowledgments This research was nancially supported by the Jacobs Foundation.

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