Principals’ Cultural Diversity Management Skills: An Answer to Minority Students’ Needs

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the role of principals’ cultural diversity management skills in ShahinShahr high schools in promoting minority students' social participation (2009-2010)”.Participants were 384 female and male high school students out of 7982 students and 54 principals and assistants out of 110 which were selected by using a stratified sampling procedure appropriate to the magnitude of population. Data were collected through two questionnaires, both developed by the authors: themanagers’ cultural diversity management skills questionnaire with 73 Likert-scale items and the students’ social participation questionnaire with 25 items. TheirCronbach Alpha reliability indiceswere.93 .83 respectively. Results showed that, on average, minority students’ social participationwas lower than that of students in Fars province. Moreover, the social participation of religious minority students was lower than that of the majority (Muslim Shiites students). Finally, there was a positive correlation between principals’ cultural diversity management skills and students’ social participation.

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