Cultural Diversity Climate in School: A Meta-Analytic Review of Its Relationships With Intergroup, Academic, and Socioemotional Outcomes

This first-of-its-kind meta-analysis (N = 79 studies; 56,552 students; k = 640 effects) provides acomprehensive assessment of five cultural diversity climate approaches that capture differentways of addressing cultural diversity in K-12 schools. We examined how intergroup contacttheory’s optimal contact conditions, multiculturalism climate, colorblind climate, criticalconsciousness climate, and polyculturalism climate were associated with children’s andadolescents’ intergroup outcomes (intergroup attitudes, cross-group friendships, experienceddiscrimination), academic outcomes (academic achievement, motivation, engagement), andsocioemotional outcomes (belonging, well-being). Results from meta-analytic random-effectsmodels revealed the largest and most consistent effects for optimal contact conditions, withsmall-to-medium-sized effects and significant relationships with all outcomes. Multiculturalismclimate was significantly and positively related to intergroup attitudes, achievement, motivation,and belonging (mostly, these were small effect sizes). Critical consciousness climate (small effectsizes) and polyculturalism climate (small-to-medium effect sizes) were correlated with bothacademic and socioemotional outcomes. Colorblind climate was not significantly associated withany outcomes. Moderator analyses revealed that contact conditions exhibited larger effects insecondary education compared with primary education and in the US compared with Europe. Thepercentage of majority group members moderated some relationships (e.g., contact conditionshad smaller effects when there were more majority group members in the sample). Significantlylarger effects emerged for student-reported colorblind climate measures than for teacher-reportedmeasures. Overall, this meta-analysis provides a highly nuanced view of the most robust evidencefor the associations between cultural diversity climate and outcomes that are critical for positivechild and youth development to date.