The Influence Of Intergroup Contact On High School Teachers’ Willingness To Help Students With Learning Difficulties

High school students who are in the period of great changes in their psychological development are often extremely sensitive and vulnerable.Students with learning disabilities account for a considerable proportion of high school students,distressed in the current academic difficulties.They are more likely to encounter and internalize the negative attitude and behavior of high school teachers,which leads to depression,dropout and even suicide.As the key role of education scene,high school teachers have special social significance for students with learning difficulties.Previous studies have found that intergroup contact is an effective strategy to improve intergroup relationship,which can be divided into actual and imaginary intergroup contact.The traditional actual intergroup contact is relatively long-term,and the emerging imaginary intergroup contact paradigm is more economical,which is also an important supplement when the actual intergroup contact is difficult to implement.Therefore,high school teachers were selected as research subjects and the survey method and experimental method were combined to explore the effect of actual intergroup contact and imaginary intergroup contact on enhancing the willingness of group help.In addition,based on the theory of intergroup contact,the role of empathy in the relationship between different types of intergroup contact and intergroup willingness to help was explored.Questionnaire survey was employed in Research One.Ninety-eight high school teachers in Wuxi,Jiangsu Province were selected as subjects to investigate the influence of actual contact level(actual contact quantity and quality)of senior high school teachers on intergroup help willingness(general and self-directed help willingness)and the role of empathy between them using actual intergroup contact scale,empathy scale and intergroup help willingness scale.Experimental method was used in Research Two and a single factor inter subject study was designed.Sixty senior high school teachers were randomly divided into experimental group and control group.The experimental group was intervened with positive imaginary contact for 3 weeks(once a week),while the control group was not intervened with any experimental manipulation.The effect of imaginary contact on intergroup willingness to help(general and self-directed willingness to help)was investigated.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The overall intergroup willingness to help is one of the indicators of intergroup willingness to help,the results in this study are all constant 1,which is not statistically significant.(2)Actual intergroup contact(contact quantity and contact quality)significantly predicts the willingness and empathy level of senior high school teachers to help students with learning disabilities,and the actual contact quality can predict the willingness of senior high school teachers to help students with learning disabilities.(3)Positive imaginative intergroup contact significantly positively predicted high school teachers’ willingness to help students with learning difficulties and empathy level.(4)In the actual situation,empathy has a significant complete mediating effect between the number of actual contact and the willingness to help,the quality of actual contact and the willingness of self-directed help.In the imaginary situation,empathy has a significant complete mediating effect in the relationship between imaginary contact(experiment vs control)and self-directed help intention.