school
Definition
School refers to the institutional context in which immigrant-descent minority youth develop and adjust, characterized as a setting that provides continuous opportunity for contact with majority culture members and exposure to majority culture norms. Within schools, sociocultural adjustment encompasses the extent to which minority students demonstrate cultural competence to navigate effectively in peer relationships, the learning domain, and their overall relationship with the school institution, including motivation to learn, behavioral engagement, and compliance with school norms. The school context is particularly significant for understanding how implicit acculturation processes, such as emotional acculturation—the degree to which minority youth adopt majority culture emotion patterns—relate to adjustment outcomes over time, especially in ethnically diverse secondary school settings.
Sources: Jasini et al. (2025)
Related Terms
Applications
School and Emotional Acculturation
Emotional acculturation positively predicted immigrant minority students' contact with majority peers over time, yet it simultaneously negatively predicted their school engagement over time, including motivation, behavioral engagement, and school compliance. This paradoxical effect was moderated by perceived discrimination, such that for students perceiving high levels of discrimination at school, emotional fit with the majority culture significantly predicted steeper declines in school motivation and behavioral engagement, whereas no such negative effects were found for students perceiving low discrimination.
Sources: Jasini et al. (2025)
School and Perceived Discrimination
Perceived discrimination at school functions as a critical moderator of the relationship between emotional acculturation and adjustment outcomes. For students perceiving high discrimination, emotional fit strongly predicted increased behavioral disengagement and non-compliant behavior.
Sources: Jasini et al. (2025)
