Does School Ethnic Diversity Promote Ethnic Relations?

As a multinational country,the stability of inter-ethnic relations is related to the long-term stability of the society and the country.The development of economic and the convenience of transportation will not only promote national fusion,but also produce some problems.School education is one of the most effective ways to promote inter-ethnic communication and build harmonious inter-ethnic relations.As an important part of school environment,more and more scholars have paid attention to the influence of school ethnic diversity on inter-ethnic relations.This study used meta-analysis and experiment to investigate the mechanism.Study 1 selected 38 empirical studies from EBSCO database,PsycInfo database,Psycarticles database,ERIC database and PBSC database by meta-analysis,72 effect sizes were obtained through unified coding.The results of main effect analysis showed that there was a significant negative correlation between school ethnic diversity and inter-ethnic relations(r=-0.246,95%CI[-0.410,-0.066]).In other words,the higher the ethnic diversity of schools,the more inter-ethnic relations tend to be tense.The results of moderating effect analysis show that gender has a moderating effect:the higher the female ratio is,the more negative the inter-ethnic relations is.The moderating effect of diversity measures was significant:studies using proportion reported a weaker negative association than those using the index method.Study 2 investigated the causal relationship between school ethnic diversity and inter-ethnic relations and the mediating effects of imagined contact through experimental design among random subjects.149 students were randomly divided into two groups:imagine multiethnic environment group and imagine mono-ethnic environment group,and then completed the measurement of imagining intergroup contact,explicit attitude,willingness for intergroup contact scales and the SC-IAT test.It was found that multiethnic environments had better outgroup attitudes and a higher willingness to engage than mono-ethnic environments.It can have a direct positive effect on attitudes.In addition,imagining multiethnic environment can promote positive imagined contact,and positive imagined contact can improve implicit attitude and increase willingness for intergroup contact.Imagining multiethnic environments decreased negative imagined intergroup contact and negative imagined intergroup contact decreased explicit attitudes and willingness for intergroup contact.Therefore,in addition to the direct effects,imagining multiethnic environments can also promote inter-ethnic relations through imagined intergroup contact.This paper investigated the effects and mechanisms of school ethnic diversity and inter-ethnic relations at home and abroad through the above two studies.It not only obtained the negative effect in the foreign context and the positive effect in the domestic context,but also verified the mediating effect of imagined contact again.The results of this study clarify the current status of relevant research,enrich the measurement methods of ethnic diversity,and increase the research evidence of imagined inter-ethnic contact,especially negative imagined inter-ethnic contact.It once again proves the potential psychological mechanism behind school ethnic diversity and inter-ethnic relations.The implications of the findings are twofold:on the one hand,they can encourage schools to strengthen inter-ethnic contact to avoid the problem of surface fusion;On the other hand,the effect of school ethnic diversity on inter-ethnic relations needs to be viewed dialectically with specific background.