Discussing diversity in the classroom: do teachers address both ethnic and socioeconomic differences?

Given that the predominant focus in the literature on diversity education has been on ethnic diversity only, we investigated whether (1) teachers differed in their classroom communications about ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, (2) student perceptions of these diversity communications depended on students’ ethnic and socioeconomic background, (3a) teacher- and student perceptions of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity communications were related, and (3b) whether these relations were moderated by students’ background. Sixty-eight teachers (Mage = 41.55, 70.6% female), and 1107 students in Grade 4–6 (Mage = 10.16, 48.1% girls) participated. We measured student-reported teachers’ ethnic-, income-, and education-based diversity communications via single items. We also measured teacher-reported ethnic-, and socioeconomic diversity communications. We conducted repeated measures ANOVAs and a Multivariate 2-Level analysis. According to both students and teachers, teachers communicate more about ethnic than socioeconomic diversity. Within socioeconomic diversity, according to students, teachers communicate more about income-based than education-based diversity. Only the latter was related to students’ socioeconomic background. Teacher- and student perceptions of ethnic diversity communications were positively related, as well as teacher perceptions of socioeconomic diversity communications and student perceptions of income-based diversity communications. It seems that classroom conversations about diversity are mainly about ethnic and not so much about socioeconomic (especially education-based) diversity. This is unfortunate, given its potential beneficial effects on intergroup outcomes.