Overview

The Social Cohesion in the Classroom dataset was collected in 2018 to examine how schools navigate societal issues and increasing religious and cultural diversity. The study surveyed both teachers and students in the fifth and sixth years of secondary education across 60 schools in Flanders.

The student survey captures perceptions and attitudes related to social cohesion, diversity, and broader societal issues, while the teacher survey provides complementary information on how these topics are approached within the classroom and school environment. By linking students and teachers to their schools, the dataset offers a distinctive multilevel perspective on the relationship between individual attitudes and educational contexts.

The data can be further enriched with external school-level characteristics, allowing researchers to examine how institutional, demographic, and contextual differences between schools shape students’ and teachers’ attitudes.

Data structure

The dataset has a hierarchical structure connecting several levels of observation:

  • Students: survey responses from fifth- and sixth-year secondary school students, including perceptions and attitudes toward societal issues, social cohesion, and religious and cultural diversity.
  • Teachers: survey responses on classroom practices and approaches to societal issues and diversity.
  • Schools: identifiers linking students and teachers to 60 participating Flemish secondary schools, which can be supplemented with additional school-level contextual indicators.

This structure supports multilevel analyses of both individual-level and contextual variation, including cross-level interactions between student characteristics, teacher practices, and school environments.

Availability

The dataset is currently unpublished, but publicly available via this website.

Researchers interested in the data or potential collaborations are welcome to contact me.

Citation

Godefroidt, A., Schroyens, M., & Arnim L. (2018). Social Cohesion in My Class (SCC): A Multilevel Survey Dataset. Unpublished dataset.