Teachers’ implicit beliefs about the students of the roma and the hungarian cultural group

Abstract

Research has shown that the beliefs about cultural, ethnic or racial diversities among students are vital for the effective work of teachers. Hence, in this paper, we aim at determining: (1) in what ways the teachers perceive and interpret the school situation that includes the students from a minority cultural group (Roma and Hungarian), i.e. what kinds of beliefs they express in the given situation; (2) whether there are any differences in the way in which teachers, within the same stadium of development of intercultural sensitivity, perceive the given situation. The sample included class teachers whose score on the Intercultural Development Inventory pointed to intercultural sensitivity in accordance with the stadium of minimisation (seventeen teachers) and polarisation (six teachers). The Critical Incident Technique (CI) was applied in the study, in two parallel forms: with a Hungarian and a Roma student. Thematic analysis yielded seven topics, four of which occurred only in the CI with a Roma student: Disrespecting school as an institution, Abuse of minority status, Separation from the class and Typical children’s motives. The comparison of teachers’ statements depending on the CI version and the developmental phase indicate that the specificity of a cultural group in question affects the expressed beliefs about this group, regardless of teachers’ intercultural sensitivity.