A national emphasis in Britain on community cohesion and citizenship has highlighted the need to explore understandings of difference within and between communities, particularly in school contexts. This paper reports on the first phase of a larger project exploring pupils' understandings and experiences of identity and diversity within secondary schools. Questionnaires were collected from 51 Year 8 pupils in two urban and ethnically diverse secondary schools in England. The findings suggest that pupils have a complex range of views about identity, (...) diversity and Britishness. (shrink)

As a way of human-computer interaction, game-based assessment is more suitable for young children because it is situational, interesting, and effective. National identity is an important factor affecting the overall development of young children and the future development of a country, which has attracted extensive attention from researchers. Nevertheless, the assessment of young children's national identity is still based on traditional evaluation, including questionnaires and interviews, which have the limitations of being inaccurate, dull, and time-consuming. To understand the characteristics of (...) children's national identity, it is necessary to use scientific and interactive assessment methods. The present study investigated whether the game-based assessment we developed specifically would be an appropriate tool to measure young children's national identity. The results show that the game-based assessment had good item discrimination. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated the game covered three aspects: national cognition mastery, national emotion engagement, and national behavior tendency. The confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the model with three factors fit the data well. The internal consistency, the split-half reliability, and the test-retest reliability meet standards. Overall, the results indicated that this game can be successfully used to assess young children's national identity with acceptable validity and reliability. Our study provides strong evidence for the use of human-computer interaction in child measurement. These findings are the first to demonstrate the promise of game-based assessment in assessing children's national identity reliably and effectively. (shrink)

A national emphasis in Britain on community cohesion and citizenship has highlighted the need to explore understandings of difference within and between communities, particularly in school contexts. This paper reports on the first phase of a larger project exploring pupils' understandings and experiences of identity and diversity within secondary schools. Questionnaires were collected from 51 Year 8 pupils in two urban and ethnically diverse secondary schools in England. The findings suggest that pupils have a complex range of views about identity, (...) diversity and Britishness. (shrink)

The European Union’s increasing attention to social and cultural matters has been expressed through the notions of European citizenship and identity which are to be developed among children, adolescents and adults. Whether, and if so, how, children perceive a European identity to coexist with national identities is a challenging and relatively under‐studied question. This paper presents part of the findings of a study conducted in December 2000 which explored the ways in which 140 10‐year‐old Greek‐Cypriot pupils constructed their national and (...) European identities. Results indicated that, despite positive attitudes towards Europe, pupils attributed little significance to the European identity, whereas national identities were extremely important. The discourse developed revealed essentialist and a‐historical representations of national identity, and an instrumentalist approach to Europe. Social psychological insights from self‐categorization theory are employed to explore whether the two identities were construed as in the same or different typical levels of abstraction. These findings are discussed within the broader socio‐political context of Cyprus and European integration. (shrink)