Improving Children's Attitudes toward Refugees

Improving Children's Attitudes toward Refugees

Improving Children's Attitudes toward Refugees

We assessed the influence of the Friendship Project, a program conceived to advance elementary school children's mind-set in the direction of refugees. Participants either obtained 4 every week courses founded on the program, or they obtained no lessons. All participants accomplished mind-set assesses before and after implementation of the program. Half accomplished the post-test 1 week after culmination of the program, while the other half accomplished the post-test 7 weeks after its completion. The program directed to more affirmative mind-set in the direction of refugees in the short period, but not in the long term. Moreover, whereas it did not boost empathy, the program expanded the percentage of participants who favoured an acculturation scheme of integration and decreased the number of participants who had conflictual acculturative fit.

Because of an boost in municipal and worldwide confrontation, by the end of 2005, the world community of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally replaced persons had come to 20.8 million, an boost of 6% over the preceding year (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2006). This large number of refugees comprises a important communal difficulty, not only in periods of finding locations where they can reside in security, but furthermore in periods of double-checking agreeable relatives between refugees and the groups that owner them.

We undertook an primary evaluation of the effectiveness of a program in a British informative setting conceived to decrease prejudice in the direction of refugees.3 While many investigations have assessed the effectiveness of interventions that goal mind-set in the direction of steady few assemblies (e.g., Hill & Augoustinos, 2001; Vrij, Akehurst, & Smith, 2003; Walker & Crogan, 1998), to our information, only one preceding study has assessed the effectiveness of an intervention that goals the mind-set of most assembly constituents in the direction of refugees (Cameron, Rutland, Brown, & Douch, 2006). Moreover, our study comprises the first evaluation of an intervention conceived by practitioners and currently being utilised broadly in schools as a entails of decreasing prejudice in the direction of refugees.

Derived from socialization idea, which states that young children come by their mind-set from their family and from gazes, multicultural curriculum programs engage educating young children about the heritage and way of life of few assemblies (e.g., Sleeter & Grant, 1994). If young children discover prejudiced mind-set, it would pursue that they can furthermore discover affirmative out-group mind-set by the identical means (Banks, 1995). This viewpoint is founded on two key assumptions: that prejudice is initiated by ignorance, so educating young children about the out-group should decrease prejudice (Appl, 1996); and that young children are inclined to tailor their public demeanour, if not their personal ideas (Gavin & Furman, 1989), to fit agreeable norms. If multicultural components can be utilised to set up a norm of tolerance and esteem in the direction of an out-group through a method of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), mind-set should finally drop in line with demeanour, premier to better intergroup ...