Showing papers by "Christian Berger published in 2021"

Civic Behavior and Sense of Belonging at School: The Moderating Role of School Climate

Abstract: The present study focuses on the moderating role of school climate to promote students’ civic behaviors in their school. Following the Authoritative School Climate Theory, it is proposed that two key dimension of school social climate (student support and disciplinary structure) are relevant to explain students’ civic engagement within their schools. Using survey data from a representative sample of the Chilean student population (N = 38,286 7th to 12th graders, 51.2% females, and 12.188 adults, 75% teachers and 25% school staff members from 754 schools) the present study tested the relative contribution of student support and disciplinary structure on students civic behaviors, directly and interacting with their sense of belonging. A series of two-level hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that, after controlling for sex, school phase, school size, and school administrative dependency, student sense of belonging was positively related to civic engagement within their schools. In addition, both student support and disciplinary structure (as reported by adults) showed a positive and direct effect on student civic engagement. However, a closer analysis of moderating effects revealed that only student support had an impact on the relationship between sense of belonging and civic behaviors of students within schools. These findings extend prior research on the association between sense of belonging and civic engagement by including the role of school climate, and in turn, inform the potential use of school-based efforts aimed at promoting adolescents’ civic engagement in middle and high school.

The role of perspective‐taking and low social class prejudice on cross‐ethnic friendship formation

Abstract: Cross-ethnic friendships offer a unique opportunity for improving intergroup relations and reduce prejudice, yet ethnic segregation of friendship networks is often seen as a major obstacle to the integration of immigrant students in educational contexts This article examines the role of perspective-taking abilities and prejudice towards low social class peers on the probability of cross-ethnic friendships in a sample of 242 students from five multicultural classrooms in Chile (Mage = 123; SD = 069, 45% girls) It was expected that students who reported high levels of perspective-taking abilities and low levels of prejudice towards low social class peers were more likely to form and maintain cross-ethnic friendships Longitudinal network analysis (RSiena) was used to examine these hypotheses, confirming the role of both variables in fostering (and reducing) friendships among Chilean and immigrant adolescents Results are discussed in light of an intersectional framework between social class and ethnicity Implications for social-emotional interventions in multicultural educational contexts are also discussed

You May Have My Help but Not Necessarily My Care: The Effect of Social Class and Empathy on Prosociality.

Abstract: Previous research has focused on the relation between social class and prosocial behavior. However, this relation is yet unclear. In this work, we shed light on this issue by considering the effect of the level of empathy and the social class of the recipient of help on two types of prosociality, namely helping and caring. In one experimental study, we found that for high-class participants, empathy had a positive effect on helping, regardless of the recipient’s social class. However, empathy had no effect for low-class participants. When it comes to caring, empathy had a positive effect for both high and low-class participants, but only when the recipient of help belonged to the same social class. This highlights that empathy by itself is not sufficient to promote cooperative relations and that the social class of the recipient of help should be taken into account to shed light on this issue.

Angle-of-arrival processing in multi-antenna multi-channel short-range wireless system

Abstract: At a receiver in a short-range wireless system having a plurality of channels and a plurality of receiving antennas, an angle-of-arrival of a signal is determined by receiving, at at least two antennas, the signal on one of the channels, determining a phase difference between the signal as received at those antennas, removing a local oscillator phase from the phase difference to provide an adjusted phase difference, and determining, from the adjusted phase difference, the angle-of-arrival. Removing the local oscillator phase includes estimating a local oscillator phase for each channel to be used for all antennas, or determining an angle using multi-channel combining, and for each channel, using that angle to determine a channel local oscillator phase, or, for a given channel, identifying, as the local oscillator phase, a phase that minimizes the sum, over all antennas, of squares of phase differences between the given channel and a neighboring channel.