Graduates of Ontario Secondary Schools' Experiences in High School and Intercultural Orientations

Abstract

How do secondary school experiences influence student intercultural orientations and how do students’ identities influence student intercultural orientations? This study uses Allport’s (1954) intergroup contact theory (the idea that sustained contact with others can reduce prejudice), Vygotsky’s (1933/1967) sociocultural theory (that we learn with and from others in specific sociocultural contexts), Charles Taylor’s (1994) theory of recognition (that human dignity demands equal recognition), John Dewey’s views on education and democracy, and a critical lens to understand the potential connections. The study accepts that students come to school with perceptions of themselves and others based on the specific sociocultural environments in which they are raised (as suggested by Vygotsky). These perceptions are influenced by such social constructions as race, Indigeneity, ethnicity, class, gender, and ability, and the embedded, internalized and often unexamined power relationships attached to these constructions of identity. The study explores how schools may affect student intercultural orientations by whether or not they bring students with different backgrounds, experiences, and cultural identities together under the conditions specified by Allport, (sustained contact, enhanced equality, institutional support, and common purpose), and whether they provide adequate recognition (following Taylor) for students’ complex, interactive and developing identities. Based on a survey of 390 recent graduates of Ontario secondary schools and fourteen individual interviews, the study finds that inequitable structures and mechanisms for school programming as well as school environments that fail to support individual student identities hinder intergroup contact in Ontario schools. Learning settings often do not allow for open discussion of local and global issues through a human rights framework, and limit students’ experience of and participation in democratic activity. The implications for Ontario education may include: a re-examination of individualism and competition in teaching and learning; contextualizing of academic merit; an examination of discriminatory school structures including state funding of denominational schooling; culturally responsive and de-colonizing pedagogy; broader and more equitable access to extra-curricular activity; greater emphasis on teacher-student relationships; and more school-based student democratic participation.