Turkish & Moroccan Background Students in the Netherlands: Cultural Preferences on Teachers

Abstract

Many teachers struggle with multicultural classrooms, because they need to be able to address the differences between their own cultural and ethnic values and those of their students. Students' cultural values influence their preferences about teachers' interpersonal behaviors. Hofstede described four dimensions on which cultural values differ. This study uses these dimensions to get a view on the preferences of students with Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds on teachers’ interpersonal behavior, compared to those of Dutch background students. A questionnaire was written based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions, which was filled in by students from Turkish, Moroccan, and Dutch cultural backgrounds. Students were regarded as having Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds if they, or their parents, were born in Turkey or Morocco. The immigrant generation of the student groups wasn’t taken into account when comparing these groups. A MANOVA was performed to investigate possible differences between the groups. The results of this study showed no statistically significant differences in preferences of Turkish, Moroccan, and Dutch students in the Netherlands regarding teachers' interpersonal behavior on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Given the fact that this study has several limitations that may have largely influenced these results, conclusions about the results have to be interpreted very cautiously.