Relationship of the Level of Ethnocentrism and the Need to Belong of Migrant Students: Determinants of an Inclusive Education Setting

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Inclusive education has been existing for many years now and had been practiced by various countries nowadays (Malaquias, 2017). This concept had been considered broad since there are different notions of these ideas fromvarious places (Loreman, 2017). Ethnocentrism deals with the attitude of humans in biding to their culture as the center of their identity (Olufson, n.d.). Belongingness in an academic institution provides a sense of social acceptance and strong connection (Romero, 2015; Vaz, et. al, 2015). The school builds a greater opportunity for the socialization of the students (Vaz, et. al, 2015) and in reducing stereotyping towards the students who are different (Laldin, 2016).

METHODS

This study used Descriptive-Correlational method for the execution of the study. Chi-square was used as the statistical treatment for the interpretation of data. The researcher used purposive sampling to obtain the participants of the study. The criterion was set so that only the qualified students would be studied. Among the 1691 students of Dasmariñas Integrated High School -Senior High School (DIHS-SHS) as of August 2018, there were 59 qualified participants. The researcher used standardized instruments of Leary, et. al (2005) forthe Need to Belong Scale and of Neuliep and McCroskey (2013) for Ethnocentrism Scale.

RESULTS

Statistically, the profile of the respondents has no relationship with their perceived need to belong. Moreover, the cross-tabulation of the relationship of thelevel of ethnocentrism to the need to belong of the respondents, regardless of the intervening variables such as sex and place of origin, has also no relationship to each other. Having the computed p-Value of 0.898 (cross-relationship), 0.9258 (in terms of place of origin), 0.9787 (in terms of sex), under the Degrees of Freedom at the level of significance of .05, all p-Values had resulted to a higher value than 0.05.

DISCUSSIONS

The results exhibited that ethnocentrism of the migrant students does not have any relationship to their belongingness. Respondents could still easily cope with their new environment regardless of their sex and place of origin. Coping is one of the values of Filipinos which is very evident in interacting with various cultures of people. This would, at least, provide an extension of assurance in creating an inclusive education setting.