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Ethno/racial affiliation, trust, and identification in higher education: the mediating role of perceived injustice in the classroom

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Abstract

The present study contributes to a vast body of empirical research on the importance of the sense of justice in education. It examines the mediating role of perceived injustice (grades and lecturer-student relations) in ethnic/racial differences concerning trust and identification. The focus is on an ethnically and racially mixed higher-education institution in Israel which provides a venue for the encounter of three distinct and otherwise insular groups of students: Ethiopian-Jews, non-Ethiopian Jews; and Arabs holding Israeli citizenship. The study argues that higher-education institutions' educational features may be conducive to fostering a sense of justice in the classroom, which ameliorates ethnic/racial rifts by promoting trust and identification. A sample of 700 Israeli university students was examined using Structural Equation Modeling. Findings partially support the study’s main argument.

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Notes

  1. In the case of a multicategorical independent variable, the term “relative” denotes the effect of being in a group (Ethiopian Jews, non-Ethiopian Jews and Israeli Arabs) relative to some referent group or set of groups Hayes, Andrew F and Kristopher J Preacher. 2014. “Statistical Mediation Analysis with a Multicategorical Independent Variable”. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology 67(3):451–470.

  2. It is noteworthy, however, that the association between perceived justice and identification is bidirectional—i.e., identification may shape the sense of (in)justice.

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thank Nina Luskin for her language editorial assistance.

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  1. Department of Leadership and Policy in Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Clara Sabbagh & Adi Ben-Menachem

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  1. Clara Sabbagh
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Correspondence to Clara Sabbagh.

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All procedures performed in the current study, which involve human participants, followed the institutional and/or national research committee's ethical standards and the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Moreover, informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Finally, the study was approved by the Faculty of Education's Ethics committee at the University of Haifa.

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Sabbagh, C., Ben-Menachem, A. Ethno/racial affiliation, trust, and identification in higher education: the mediating role of perceived injustice in the classroom. Soc Psychol Educ 24, 717–739 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09629-8

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