TY - JOUR
T1 - By law, custom or local atmosphere’: Exploring institutional support in school‐based contact programmes
AU - Loader, Rebecca
AU - Hughes, Joanne
AU - Furey, Andrea
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Safet Balazhi and Filipina Negrievska for their help with the organisation of interviews in North Macedonia and Professor Ruth Leitch for her assistance with data collection.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 British Educational Research Association
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/3/12
Y1 - 2020/3/12
N2 - Allport’s intergroup contact theory outlines four conditions for effective contact: equal status between participants within the contact situation, cooperation, common goals and institutional support. While the literature indicates that institutional support may be a particularly important condition for effective contact, its role and impact remain under‐researched, particularly in studies of contact within real‐world contexts. This article seeks to address this gap through a study of institutional support within a school‐based contact initiative operating in two countries, Northern Ireland and North Macedonia. Known as ‘shared education’, this promotes inter‐school collaboration as a means of fostering contact between pupils from different ethnic or religious backgrounds. Adopting a qualitative approach and using data collected through interviews with staff involved in four shared education projects, this study explores three aspects: the extent to which shared education demonstrates support for contact; the factors that encourage or impede supportive contact norms; and the relationship between the norms of the school and those of other authorities, particularly parents and the community.
AB - Allport’s intergroup contact theory outlines four conditions for effective contact: equal status between participants within the contact situation, cooperation, common goals and institutional support. While the literature indicates that institutional support may be a particularly important condition for effective contact, its role and impact remain under‐researched, particularly in studies of contact within real‐world contexts. This article seeks to address this gap through a study of institutional support within a school‐based contact initiative operating in two countries, Northern Ireland and North Macedonia. Known as ‘shared education’, this promotes inter‐school collaboration as a means of fostering contact between pupils from different ethnic or religious backgrounds. Adopting a qualitative approach and using data collected through interviews with staff involved in four shared education projects, this study explores three aspects: the extent to which shared education demonstrates support for contact; the factors that encourage or impede supportive contact norms; and the relationship between the norms of the school and those of other authorities, particularly parents and the community.
KW - comparative education—research approaches
KW - institutional support
KW - intercultural education
KW - intergroup relations
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081720530&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/en/publications/by-law-custom-or-local-atmosphere-exploring-institutional-support
U2 - 10.1002/berj.3612
DO - 10.1002/berj.3612
M3 - Article
VL - 46
SP - 1044
EP - 1063
JO - British Educational Research Journal
JF - British Educational Research Journal
SN - 0141-1926
IS - 5
ER -