TY - JOUR A1 - Grütter, Jeanine A1 - Meyer, Bertolt A1 - Philipp, Michel A1 - Stegmann, Sebastian A1 - Dick, Rolf van T1 - Beyond ethnic diversity: the role of teacher care for interethnic relations T2 - Frontiers in education N2 - Drawing on the role of teachers for peer ecologies, we investigated whether students favored ethnically homogenous over ethnically diverse relationships, depending on classroom diversity and perceived teacher care. We specifically studied students’ intra- and interethnic relationships in classrooms with different ethnic compositions, accounting for homogeneous subgroups forming on the basis of ethnicity and gender diversity (i.e., ethnic-demographic faultlines). Based on multilevel social network analyses of dyadic networks between 1299 early adolescents in 70 German fourth grade classrooms, the results indicated strong ethnic homophily, particularly driven by German students who favored ethnically homogenous dyads over mixed dyads. As anticipated, the results showed that there was more in-group bias if perceived teacher care was low rather than high. Moreover, stronger faultlines were associated with stronger in-group bias; however, this relation was moderated by teacher care: If students perceived high teacher care, they showed a higher preference for mixed-ethnic dyads, even in classrooms with strong faultlines. These findings highlight the central role of teachers as agents of positive diversity management and the need to consider contextual classroom factors other than ethnic diversity when investigating intergroup relations in schools. KW - Interethnic Relations KW - teacher care KW - Peer ecology KW - dyadic social networks KW - Faultlines KW - ethnic diversity Y1 - 2021 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/57549 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-575495 UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.586709/abstract SN - 2504-284X VL - 5 IS - Art. 586709 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER -