Religion in the public schools: An examination of school personnel knowledge of the law and attitudes toward religious expression

Abstract

Many Americans are familiar with the First Amendment, but its application to prayer and religious activities in public schools is often misunderstood. Religious beliefs are increasingly diverse in the United States. Therefore, it seems imperative that school personnel are aware of the law and sensitive to an array of religious practices. We conducted two studies that explored school personnel’s (a) understanding of laws on religious expression in public schools; (b) attitudes toward religious expression in public schools; and (c) tolerance for different religions. Key Study 1 findings were that school personnel with more service years had less accurate knowledge of religious expression laws than school personnel with fewer service years, and more knowledge was related to increased sensitivity to religious practices in schools. Study 2 conceptually replicated these relations with a sample of pre-service teachers and found that Right-wing Authoritarianism mediated the relation between knowledge of the law and religious sensitivity, presenting an avenue for interventions to increase religious sensitivity.

Keywords

Religion First Amendment multiculturalism attitudes toward religion religious tolerance

Introduction

Debates about the separation of church and state are replete in American history, and there is no indication that they will end. In fact, it has been argued that this debate is growing fiercer because of recent historical events in the U.S., such as terrorist attacks, school shootings, and shifts in politics (see Laats, 2012). As noted by Warnick (2012), the debate surrounding the First Amendment, which establishes that government cannot endorse or restrict the practice of any particular religion, seems to be especially fervent in the public schools. While the First Amendment does institute a separation of church and state, it should be noted that the First Amendment does not forbid expression of religion in public schools (Anti-Defamation League, 1999). Case law and legislation guide how religion can be expressed by students and teachers within the public school system. For example, students may establish clubs related to religious beliefs in the same way they can for other extracurricular interests (Westside Community Schools v. Mergers, 1990).

It is important that teachers and other personnel understand these laws so that their approaches to religion are appropriate, lawful, and sensitive to religious diversity and expression. It is unclear, however, that these laws are understood. Given the importance of establishing and maintaining positive home–school relationships with all families, it is imperative for teachers to have a clear understanding of the rights afforded under the First Amendment.

Separation of church and state

“Separation of church and state” is a simple idiom for a web of legally and psychologically complex interactions that play out in public schools across America. Students in public schools are afforded rights through the First Amendment that protects their freedom to express their religious beliefs (U.S. Const. amend. I., 1789). Legal challenges brought by students and school districts have helped determine what kinds of activities can occur at school and who can initiate those activities (The Pew Forum, 2007). Today, the Equal Access Act (1984) primarily guides religious expression in public schools. This Act mandates that a public school that receives federal funding must allow non-curriculum organizations equal access to meeting space. Although this Act was found constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1990, and has been used in many court cases brought against public schools, there are still many questions regarding the practical applications of this Act (Alexander and Alexander, 2012; Haynes and Thomas, 2001).

The central focus on religion in public schools has been on the legal rights of students to freely express themselves in the school setting or to refrain from engaging in activities that are religiously motivated or that contradict their personal religious beliefs. Case law (e.g. Westside Community Schools v. Mergers, 1990; Widmar v. Vincent, 1981) has determined that students in public schools are allowed to speak about religion and engage in activities related to religious beliefs to the same extent that students are allowed to speak and gather about other non-curriculum-related activities. It is important to note, however, that these activities must be student initiated. Religious activities initiated by the school are considered to be government created and sponsored, and the courts have established that “all government action must have a predominantly secular purpose” (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1973).

In sum, public schools must allow student-initiated religious activity in the same way that they allow other non-curricular activity. Further, public schools must not interfere with the First Amendment rights of students to express their religious beliefs, nor may they mandate participation in any school activity that contradicts their religious beliefs or practices.

Student and teacher diversity in today’s public schools

Today’s student body is more racially diverse than ever before (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). The number of students who are White will continue to decrease, while the number of students who are Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and of mixed race is expected to increase through the year 2025. Further, children who were born outside of the United States are the fastest growing sector of students (Tienda and Haskins, 2011). Nearly one quarter of public school students have at least one immigrant parent and bring with them their own cultural values to school (Crouch and Zakariya, 2012). Addressing diversity issues is complicated by a teaching workforce that is 82% White, a demographic that reports discomfort teaching diversity materials and largely believes that issues of diversity are not important or relevant to education (Han, 2013; National Center for Education Statistics, 2013).

Religious demographics in the United States

Religion has been central to the United States since its founding (Warf and Winsberg, 2008). Historically, there has been a strong association between the United States and Christianity. In fact, many Americans believe that the country’s heritage is Christian (Chaves, 2011). In reality, however, scholars delineate between civil religion and Christian nationalism to explain the role of Christianity in the United States. A full review of these constructs is beyond the purview of the current research (see Gorski, 2017a). Briefly, civil religion involves the covenantal relation of the United States to a divine Creator that endows upon it blessings in return for its pursuit of justice. Christian nationalism is evangelical in nature, often referring to scripture and citing the need to maintain cultural purity, thus by definition excluding other faiths and cultures (Gorski, 2017b; Whitehead et al., 2018). Although there is evidence that Christian nationalism is on the rise (Gorski, 2017b; Whitehead et al., 2018), Americans have actually become more religiously diverse over the past 20 years (Griffith, 2008; Tilson and Venkateswaran, 2004). According to the Pew Research Center, from 2007 to 2014, the number of people who identified as Christian declined, while the number of people who identified as unaffiliated or non-Christian (e.g. Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu) increased (Pew Research Center, 2015).

The change in the makeup of religious and political demographics of the United States has influenced opinions about religious expression in school (Schwadel, 2013). As religious diversity has increased in the United States, so has tolerance for secular Americans. Schwadel (2010) pointed to the influence of the baby boomer generation on both the diversification of religious beliefs and disaffiliation with religion. Taken together, these factors may have contributed to increased levels of support for the separation of church and state, and in turn led to decreased levels of support for religious activities in public schools (Schwadel, 2013).

The importance of religion in school

Just as the importance of separation of church and state is important for many people, the ability to practice religion in school is important for others. As an example, for some minority or immigrant students, religion, and not race, is the central identity that is critical to their school climate (Ghaffar-Kucher, 2012). Indeed, religion and spirituality seem to be more important in general to the lives of minority racial groups than to White Americans (Taylor and Chatters, 2010). Religion can buffer the effects of minority racial status on academic achievement, such that religiously committed minority students perform much better than their non-committed counterparts (Jeynes, 2003). When one considers that a school’s religious climate can affect students’ expressed religious behavior, religious sensitivity becomes a valuable and necessary skill for school personnel (Barrett et al., 2007). Although attitudes towards cultural diversity in general have received increased attention in the literature (e.g. Dedeoglu and Lamme, 2011; Milner et al., 2003), little research has been conducted specifically on teachers’ attitudes toward religious diversity or their knowledge of the laws concerning religious expression in public schools. How teachers interpret or understand First Amendment laws in regards to religious expression may affect a school’s religious climate and prove to be a critical factor in many students’ academic success.

The present research

Although legal rights are in place for students in public schools and for the public schools themselves, there is little psychological research about how they play out “on the ground.” That is, there are no known published studies that investigate how school personnel make everyday interpretations of the laws on religious expression. In fact, there is no known published research that measures the extent to which school personnel actually know what the law says about religion in public schools. Further, the influence of people’s own religious views has not been studied in this context.

The purpose of the present research was threefold. First, we wanted to measure school personnel’s knowledge of the laws about religious expression in the public schools and examine variables that may be related to this knowledge. Second, we wanted to measure school personnel’s sensitivity toward religious practices that could conceivably take place in schools, and toward students’ religious-based objections to participation in some school activities. Third, we wanted this research to reflect the idea that school personnel’s knowledge of the laws about religious expression and their sensitivity toward different religions may be influenced by factors such as whether or not they are practicing educators (i.e. in-service teachers) or pre-service teachers (i.e. undergraduate students). Our primary rationale for this conceptualization is that diversity training and multiculturalism were largely non-existent in teacher preparation programs of the past (McAllister and Irvine, 2000; Yuan, 2018). Therefore, similar to other kinds of multicultural issues (e.g. Fine-Davis and Faas, 2014), educators who have been on the job for a significant amount of time may have different levels of both knowledge of the laws about religious expression and religious sensitivity.

With this plan in mind, we conducted two studies to examine the aforementioned relations. We first set out to address our research questions using a sample of on-the-job school personnel and then followed up with a second study that employed a sample of pre-service teachers. The primary purpose of Study 1 was to (a) measure schools personnel’s knowledge of the law regarding religious expression in public school; (b) examine school personnel’s sensitivity toward a diverse array of religiously motivated student behaviors; and (c) determine the possible relationships between knowledge of the law, religious sensitivity, and the religiosity of school personnel. To that end, we first administered a survey to school personnel in two Illinois school districts. Based on those findings, we conducted Study 2 in which we included additional measures and surveyed pre-service teachers enrolled at a Midwestern university.

Study 1

Method

Participants

A total of 89 (62 female, 27 male) school employees at two Illinois school districts responded to our survey. The sample included 47 teachers, 35 support personnel (e.g. school psychologists, speech therapists), and 7 administrators. The mean age was 34.11 (SD = 7.97). Table 1 presents a breakdown of participants by gender and occupation. The majority (87.6%) of our sample identified as Christian, 4.5% identified as Agnostic, 3.4% identified as Atheist, and 3.4% identified as Other. No one in our sample endorsed Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim religious identities.

Table 1.

Participants by gender and occupation.

	Male		Female		Total
	n	%	n	%	n	%
Teacher	14	51.9	33	53.2	47	52.8
School psychologist	2	7.4	9	14.5	11	12.4
Speech therapist	2	7.4	4	6.5	6	6.7
Social worker	0	0.0	5	8.1	5	5.6
Principal	2	7.4	3	4.8	5	5.6
Assistant principal	2	7.4	0	0.0	2	2.2
Paraprofessional	2	7.4	2	3.2	4	4.5
Other	3	11.1	6	9.7	9	10.1
Total	27	100.0	62	100.0	89	100.0

Measures

Religiosity and religious denomination

We administered the Intrinsic/Extrinsic Orientation Scale – Revised (I/E – R; Gorsuch and McPherson, 1989), which includes three subscales that assess the various motivations for holding religious beliefs and engaging in religious behavior. The Intrinsic subscale measures the extent to which one internalizes the norms and values of the church. The Extrinsic–Social and Extrinsic–Personal subscales measure the extent to which one uses religion in order to achieve nonreligious social or personal goals. Example items include, “It is important for me to spend time in private thought and prayer.” (Intrinsic), “I go to church mostly to spend time with my friends.” (Extrinsic–Social), and “What religion offers me most is comfort in times of trouble and sorrow.” (Extrinsic–Personal). Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .71.

Knowledge of Law Scale

We developed a True–False measure of knowledge about the current laws regarding religious expression in the public schools. Fifteen items were created based on information in the U.S. Department of Education Guidelines on religious expression in public schools (Haynes and Thomas, 2007). An example item was “Teachers in public schools can use the Bible or other scripture to teach about the history of religion.” Correct answers were scored as 1 and incorrect scores were scored as zero. Scores were summed, with higher scores indicating more knowledge about the laws that govern religious expression in schools. The Kuder-Richardson 20 reliability index for this scale was .71.

Religious sensitivity scale

A series of seven scenarios was developed for this study to measure participant sensitivity to various situations involving religion or religious practices that could feasibly happen at school. Participants were instructed to rate the extent to which they would be okay with each scenario occurring in their schools. Participants selected 1 (This definitely would NOT be okay with me), 2 (This MIGHT be okay with me), or 3 (This definitely WOULD be okay with me). Example scenarios were “How would you feel if you worked at a school where they kept a space available for students to pray at noon?” and “How would you feel if a Christian student was excused from school on Good Friday?” Participant responses were averaged and higher scores indicated more sensitivity toward religious practices in schools. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .60.

Procedure

Following approval by the university’s Institutional Review Board, administrators in each school district granted permission to distribute the survey to its employees. Participants were then recruited via an email that contained the link to an online survey. After consenting to participate in the study, all participants saw the survey items in the same order: demographic questions, I/E-R scale, KLS, and RSS subscales. The survey took approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Results

Religiosity, religious sensitivity, and knowledge of the law

As shown in Table 2, we found a significant positive relation between the amount of knowledge possessed by participants (KLS) and their sensitivity toward religious practices in the public schools (RSS), r = .33, p < .001, an indication that knowledge about what constitutes legal religious practices in the public schools is related to how sensitive participants were toward those religious practices. There was no evidence of a significant relation between religiosity and religious sensitivity, r = −.03, p = .26.

Table 2.

Intercorrelations, means, and standard deviations for Study 1 variables.

Measure	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Intrinsic	–
2. Extrinsic–Social	.23*	–
3. Extrinsic–Personal	.46**	.38**	–
4. KLS	−.16	−.04	−.15	–
5. RSS	.04	.04	.02	.35**	–
6. Service years	.12	−.07	.10	−.29**	.08	–
M	3.48	5.73	9.73	10.34	1.86	8.58
SD	0.89	2.26	2.93	2.77	0.35	6.83

KLS: Knowledge of Law Scale; RSS: religious sensitivity scale. N = 89.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Knowledge and service years

Participants were asked to indicate how many years they had worked in a public school setting. Responses ranged from 1 to 21 years (M = 8.58, SD = 6.83). Table 2 shows the significant negative relation between the number of years participants had worked in public schools and the amount of knowledge they had about laws regarding religious expression in public schools, r = −.29, p = .006. Participants who reported working in schools for fewer years tended to know more about these laws than participants who reported working in schools for longer periods of time.

Discussion

Issues surrounding religion have historically been contentious in the United States. Recently, issues related to the First Amendment have come to the forefront, including those about religious expression in public schools. A cursory glance at social media outlets, blogs, and news programs reveals a common, divisive thread among the opinions that are expressed about the First Amendment; in particular, there is conflict regarding the Establishment Clause, the first pronouncement within the First Amendment that concerns religion. Some people maintain that the separation between church and state has blurred and American society has veered away from one of its core values, which is freedom from religious persecution and the right to live free of religion or religious influence (ACLU, 2015). Others, however, assert that Americans are increasingly losing their right to freely express their religion, to the detriment of society (American Family Association, 2015).

It is in this light that we set out to investigate religious expression in the public schools. To our knowledge, no published research has examined the extent to which public school personnel know what the laws regarding religious expression are, or what their attitudes are toward religious expression in the school environment. Given that students in public schools come from increasingly diverse cultural backgrounds, this line of inquiry seems warranted. Our findings provide a starting point for future investigation.

We found that the more experience working in a school an individual had, the less he or she knew about legal expression of religion in public schools. One interpretation of this finding relates to the amount of and proximity to personnel’s pre-service education. Similar to other types of training (e.g. technology in the classroom; Mahdi and Al-Dera, 2013), school personnel who were more recently trained on diversity and legal issues such as religious expression likely have better recall of the information they were taught than their peers who have been on the job for a longer period of time. Additionally, there has been an upward trend in the past 10 to 15 years of including diversity courses in training programs for educators and other school personnel (Akiba et al., 2010; Taylor et al., 2016). This type of training may be reflected in our findings.

Indeed, we also found that the more participants knew about the law, the more overall religious sensitivity they expressed. Coupled together, these findings suggest that, compared to their counterparts with more service years, school personnel who had fewer service years likely received more diversity training, had more knowledge of students’ religious rights in public schools and, in turn, were more sensitive to students’ possible religious practices. It is possible that these factors translate into personnel who are better equipped to improve school climate and advance minority students’ academic achievement as has been the demonstrated with other studies concerning more general racial diversity issues.

Contrary to our expectations, we did not find a relation between religiosity and religious sensitivity. One potential explanation for this finding is the marginal level of the RSS (.60), which was developed for this study and has less than optimal psychometric properties. Another possibility is that other factors that were not measured in Study 1 could be at play, such as Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1988), a personality trait that is defined by traditional, rigid thinking about social mores and tendencies to behave harshly in the face of perceived infractions of law or social order. RWA has often been linked to negative attitudes toward minority religions (e.g. Islam) and intolerance toward people who are perceived as disruptive to authority and values that fall outside of what is “traditional.” With these ideas in mind, we set out to better understand the nature of school personnel’s knowledge and attitudes toward religious expression in schools in Study 2.

Study 2

In Study 1, we found an inverse relation between participants’ number of service years and their knowledge about the laws on religious expression in public schools. To further examine this relation, we set out to examine the extent to which pre-service teachers knew compared to their in-service counterparts. If so, this would have implications for training programs and professional development. We also wanted to extend our knowledge of the relation between knowledge about the law and attitudes toward religious expression. To that end, we used the Religious Intolerance Scale (RIS; (Aosved and Long, 2006), an established scale of religious tolerance developed to measure negative attitudes toward a variety of religious groups, rather than the RSS used in Study 1, which produced a suboptimal reliability estimate.

In addition, we wanted to extend our understanding of the relation between knowledge of the law and attitudes toward religious expression. Guided by the prejudice and religion literature, we hypothesized that Right-wing Authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1988) would explain the relation between knowledge of law and tolerance. RWA is the tendency to adhere to traditional social values, obey authority, and aggress toward those who challenge said values and authority. This personality trait has a robust relation to a wide array of attitudes and discriminatory behaviors, such as ethnocentrism, religious prejudice, homophobia, anti-immigration attitudes, and intergroup aggression (Banyasz et al., 2014; Craig and Richeson, 2014; Goodnight et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2013). Previous research has also demonstrated that RWA serves as a mediator, or explanatory mechanism, through which many diverse variables (e.g. personality traits, attitudes, values, etc.) exert their influence on negative intergroup attitudes (Cramer et al., 2013; Goodnight et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2012; Sibley et al., 2010).

There is good reason to believe that RWA could explain the relation between knowledge of the law and religious intolerance in a pre-service teacher sample. Peterson et al. (2002) found that people high in RWA tend to have very poor actual knowledge of politics and government; these authors argued that such knowledge would contradict and breakdown authoritarian belief systems and tendencies. Thus, greater knowledge of students’ First Amendment rights to religious expression, knowledge that contradicts authoritarian ethnocentrism, might in fact reduce levels of RWA. Additionally, people with high levels of RWA tend to be especially religious, ethnocentric, and punitive toward outgroups, indicating that higher RWA levels are likely a predictor of higher levels of religious intolerance as well (Altemeyer, 1988). Taken together, these findings suggest that RWA may mediate the relation between knowledge of the law (concerning students’ rights) and religious intolerance. Said differently, knowledge of the law may reduce levels of RWA, which in turn may reduce religious intolerance.

The primary purposes of Study 2 were to (a) examine pre-service teachers’ knowledge of the law; (b) examine the relations among religiosity, knowledge of the law, and religious sensitivity, as measured by an established RIS; and (d) examine the potential mediating role of RWA in these relations.

Method

Participants

A total of 80 (62 female, 18 male) pre-service teachers who were enrolled in an education course served as participants. The mean age was 21.75 years (SD = 4.00). Table 3 presents the sample breakdown for gender and year in school.

Table 3.

Participants by gender and year in school.

	Male		Female		Total
Year	n	%	n	%	n	%
Freshman	0	0.0	0	0.0	0	0.0
Sophomore	1	5.6	8	12.9	9	11.3
Junior	2	11.1	23	37.1	25	31.3
Senior	14	77.8	30	48.4	44	55.0
Graduate student	1	5.6	1	1.6	2	2.5
Total	18	100.0	62	100.0	80	100.0

Measures

Religiosity and religious denomination

Similar to Study 1, we used the I/E – R as our measure of religiosity. Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .81. We also asked participants the same question used in Study 1 to determine their religious denomination. Consistent with those findings, but to a lesser extent, the majority (68.6%) of the sample identified as Christian. Other religions represented were Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism (1.3% each), whereas 5% identified as Atheist, 13.8% identified as Agnostic, and 8.8% endorsed Other Religion.

KLS

The same scale from Study 1 was used to measure participants’ knowledge of current laws about religious expression, KR20 = .69.

RIS

The RIS is a nine-item scale that measures attitudes toward many religious groups. Response choices range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Responses are summed to obtain a total score. Higher scores indicate less religious tolerance. Example items include “Catholics have a ‘holier than thou’ attitude” and “Muslims are more treacherous than other groups of religious people.” The statistical properties of this scale have been demonstrated to be sound (e.g. Aosved and Long, 2006; Aosved et al., 2009). Cronbach’s alpha for this scale with the current sample was .81.

Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale

The RWA Scale (Altemeyer, 1988) is a 30-item scale that measures tendencies to submit to authority, to endorse aggression towards violators of social norms, and to uphold highly traditional beliefs about society. Response choices range from −4 (disagree extremely) to + 4 (agree extremely). Examples of items on the scale are “Obedience is the most important value children should learn” and “Some young people sometimes get rebellious ideas, but as they get older they ought to become more mature and forget such things.” Cronbach’s alpha for this scale for the current sample was .91.

Procedure

Upon approval by the Institutional Review Board, an online survey was administered to undergraduate education majors at a Midwestern university. Students were sent email invitations to participate in the survey for the chance to win a gift card. The link to the survey was included in the email. The survey took no more than 30 minutes to complete.

Results

Religiosity and religious sensitivity

See Table 4 for intercorrelations, means, and standard deviations of all Study 2 variables. There was no evidence of a relation between participant scores on Intrinsic, Extrinsic–Social, or Extrinsic–Personal scales and participant scores on the RIS, r = −.01, p = .95, r = .19, p = .12, r = .02, p = .88, respectively. This finding is consistent with those in our first study when we used the RSS as our measure of religious sensitivity.

Table 4.

Intercorrelations, means, and standard deviations for Study 2 variables.

Measure	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Intrinsic	–
2. Extrinsic–Social	.52**	–
3. Extrinsic–Personal	.69**	.53**	–
4. KLS	.13	.10	.17	–
5. RIS	−.01	.19	.02	−.39**	–
6. RWA	.17	.37**	.26*	−.23	.44**	–
M	2.93	6.22	9.29	10.02	20.31	57.01
SD	0.77	2.92	2.99	2.84	5.82	19.77

KLS: Knowledge of Law Scale; RIS: Religious Intolerance Scale; RWA: Right-wing Authoritarianism scale.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Knowledge and religious sensitivity

There was a significant negative correlation between participant knowledge of the law, as measured by the KLS, and RIS, r = −.39, p < .001. This finding indicates that participants who had more extensive knowledge of the laws on religious expression also tended to have higher levels of tolerance toward different religions.

Right-wing Authoritarianism

Religiosity

There was a significant positive relation between participant scores on RWA and the Extrinsic–Social scale and Extrinsic–Personal scale, r = .37, p < .001 and r = .26, p = .03, respectively. There was no evidence of a similar relation between RWA and the Intrinsic scale, r = .17, p = .17.

Religious sensitivity

There was a significant negative relation between participant scores on RWA and religious sensitivity, as measured by the RIS, r = .44, p < .001. This finding indicates that participants higher in RWA tended to demonstrate less tolerance toward different religions. There was a significant negative relation between scores on the RWA and KLS measures, indicating that participants with higher scores on RWA tended to know less about the laws on religious expression in the schools than participants with lower scores on RWA.

Knowledge and religious sensitivity

To test our hypothesis that participant scores on RWA would mediate the relation between scores on the KLS and RIS scales, we used the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013), which utilizes a method of mediation analysis that is based on bootstrap sampling procedures that generate confidence intervals (Preacher and Hayes, 2004, 2008). The confidence intervals are used to evaluate indirect pathways between independent and dependent variables. Using this technique avoids the limitations of more traditional mediation analyses (e.g. Baron and Kenny, 1986), such as Type I error inflation and the lack of ability to quantify the presence of mediation effects (Hayes, 2009).

Using this more contemporary approach to mediation analysis, we tested paths a (predictor variable to mediator variable), b (mediator variable to criterion variable), c (direct path from predictor variable to criterion variable), and c′ (indirect path from predictor variable to criterion variable). Table 5 contains a summary of the mediation model. The direct and indirect effects of RWA were estimated for KLS and RIS. Bootstrapping (5000 samples) was used to generate confidence intervals for the indirect effect. Figure 1 shows unstandardized path coefficients. The indirect effect of KLS on RIS was significant (ab = −0.17), as 95% CIs [−0.38, −0.04] did not include zero, one of the conditions of mediation (Preacher and Hayes, 2008). Additionally, the direct effect of KLS on RIS remained significant after accounting for RWA, a pattern of results consistent with partial mediation.

Figure 1.

Unstandardized regression coefficients for the relation between KLS and RIS as partially mediated by RWA. The unstandardized regression coefficient that shows the direct effect between KLS and RIS is in parentheses.

Table 5.

Summary models of RWA as a mediator of KLS and RIS.

Predictor	B	SE	t	p
KLS to RWA (Path a)	−1.61	.82	−1.97	.05
RWA to RIS (Path b)	0.11	.03	3.44	.001
KLS to RIS (Path c)	−.80	.23	−3.52	.001
KLS to RIS (Path c′)	−0.63	.22	−2.89	.01

Note: Paths a, b, c, and c′: mediation pathways as described in Preacher and Hayes (2008). Nine cases were deleted due to missing data; therefore, N = 71.

RWA: Right-wing Authoritarianism; KLS: Knowledge of Law Scale; RIS: Religious Intolerance Scale.

Discussion

In Study 2, we set out to further our understanding of the relation between knowledge of the laws of religious expression and religious sensitivity by using a more reliable scale for the latter construct than was used in Study 1, and by sampling from a population of pre-service teachers rather than on-the-job school personnel. In addition, we were interested in examining the role of Right-wing Authoritarianism in this relation.

We found that pre-service teachers with higher RWA scores, and thus higher ethnocentric tendencies, expressed less tolerance of religious practices than pre-service teachers with lower RWA scores. This finding is consistent with the body of literature (e.g. Craig and Richeson, 2014; Goodnight et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2013) that has consistently shown that people who score high in RWA tend to subscribe to very traditional social conventions and to want constraints on behavior that goes beyond their bounds. People who score high on RWA typically support uniformity over diversity and may even approve of (or engage in) aggression toward others who do not adhere to social norms. Those who fit the high-RWA profile often have negative attitudes toward people who are ethnic, racial, and religious minorities (Altemeyer, 1988; Johnson et al., 2010). Thus, our finding that participants with this profile had less religious sensitivity than those who did not fit this profile is not surprising.

We also found that participants with higher RWA scores had lower KLS scores, indicating less knowledge of the laws that dictate the circumstances under which religious practices can be carried out in public schools. This finding fits with other research (e.g. Peterson et al., 2002) that shows that people who fit a high-RWA profile are less likely to be informed about politics and government. Moreover, it suggests that people who fit this profile may be less informed about laws as well. Our model showed that RWA partially mediated the relationship between knowledge of the law and religious intolerance. In other words, RWA helped to explain the relation between how much pre-service teachers knew about the law and how tolerant they were of various religions. One possible interpretation of these findings is that greater education about the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment may abate authoritarian attitudes and belief systems, resulting in reduced tendencies toward intolerance of varied religious groups and practices.

This finding is consistent with other research on the mediating role of RWA. Caricati et al. (2017) found that RWA partially mediated the relation between threat induction and prejudice toward immigrants. Similarly, Goodnight et al. (2014) concluded that RWA mediated the relation between masculinity and aggression. Shook et al. (2017) focused on dangerous world view, a component of highly conservative ideologies like RWA and found that the relation between disgust and social conservatism was partially mediated by dangerous world view. These findings provide support for our conceptualization of RWA as an important link between knowledge of religious expression law and religious tolerance. Further, they provide some guidance on the implications of our model. For example, RWA may be a good target for intervention. Following the line of thought described by Goodnight et al. (2014), targeting RWA characteristics such as fear and self-righteousness may lead to reductions in religious intolerance. Similarly, our model suggests that we may be able to increase religious tolerance if we target KLS for intervention. This is consistent with Peterson et al. (2002), who suggest that high-RWA people may be generally less knowledgeable about laws and politics. Applying this idea to our findings, it is possible that providing education about legal issues on religious expression in public schools would have positive effects on religious tolerance. Taken together, it is possible that religious tolerance may be increased using both kinds of interventions.

General discussion

Public debate over First Amendment rights in school, especially with regard to religious expression, is contentious and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. Despite this, students’ rights to religious expression in public school are clear (Pew Research Center, 2015; U.S. Const. amend. I., 1789). Less clear, however, is how teachers and other school personnel understand these rights and how this knowledge affects their attitudes and behavior. Because teachers and school personnel have considerable influence on students (Gini et al., 2018; Weyns et al., 2018) and their academic success, their knowledge of students’ rights would seem to be of great practical importance. The current studies are, to our knowledge, the first to empirically explore the extent to which school personnel know the laws about religious expression in public schools and what their attitudes are toward religious practices in the schools.

In both studies, we found that participants with greater knowledge of lawful religious expression in school were more tolerant of religious groups and practices, suggesting that education about students’ rights may lead to greater tolerance. In Study 2, pre-service teachers with high scores on RWA, a measure associated with extreme ethnocentric tendencies, were more likely than low-RWA pre-service teachers to express higher levels of religious intolerance. In fact, RWA partially mediated the relation between knowledge of law and religious tolerance. Thus, our model suggests that knowledge of the law might improve religious sensitivity by first affecting authoritarian tendencies. Indeed, Study 2 found that the relationship between knowledge of law and religious intolerance was partially explained by levels of authoritarianism. In other words, more knowledge about students’ legal religious expression in school likely curtailed the rigid, traditionalist beliefs and attitudes of authoritarianism. This more flexible, less authoritarian tendency was then related to more tolerant attitudes toward religious groups. It is important to keep in mind, however, that RWA only partially mediated the relation, which indicates that there was still a direct effect of knowledge of students’ rights and religious tolerance.

One implication of our findings is that education about the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment should be part of pre-service teacher training and professional development for on-the-job teachers. This type of training is more common for teachers who have more recently graduated from their training programs and there is some evidence of its success in improving teacher–student relations (Bentley-Williams and Morgan, 2013; Frankenberg and Siegel-Hawley, 2008). Ensuring that pre-service teachers understand the rights of their students may lead to more positive reactions toward students of different religious backgrounds and provide every student a more supportive school climate.

The importance of this issue becomes apparent when one considers that the number of minority and immigrant students in the United States is growing rapidly (Crouch and Zakariya, 2012; Tienda and Haskins, 2011). Indeed, religion and spirituality may be more important in general to the lives of minority racial groups than to White Americans (Taylor and Chatters, 2010). Religion can buffer the effects of minority racial status on academic achievement, such that religiously committed minority students perform better than their non-committed counterparts (Jeynes, 2003). Thus, religious sensitivity becomes a valuable and necessary skill for school personnel (Barrett et al., 2007).

These findings also have implications for areas in which those providing such training might focus their efforts. Specifically, teachers’ relations to an increasingly diverse student body might be improved by targeting the rigid, traditionalist views of society held by those high on RWA, as higher authoritarianism was related to higher religious intolerance. Further, our findings suggest that merely having knowledge of students’ rights to religious expression in public schools might lead to increased religious tolerance. Diversity training that focuses on teaching students’ legal rights and that includes education that challenges typical authoritarian attitudes could help teachers be more sensitive to the variety of religious groups and practices they may encounter during their careers.

Limitations

Although findings from the current research provide promising insights, limitations must be acknowledged. Both studies included a small number of male participants (30% in Study 1 and 22% in Study 2) and, although consistent with the ratio of male to female teachers in the general population, the low number of men in our studies limits generalizability of our findings. Similarly, our samples consisted of participants who identified primarily as Christian. Although this mirrors both the general population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012) and demographics of school personnel (Cobern et al., 2013; Dedeoglu and Lamme, 2011), it is important to acknowledge that our findings would likely be markedly different had we a more diverse representation of religious beliefs in our samples.

Another limitation of our work lies in the psychometric properties of the RSS, our measure of religious sensitivity in Study 1. We developed the RSS using example scenarios of students engaging in religious practices at school because we thought the scenarios would be salient for our in-service sample of school personnel. The reliability estimate for this scale was low, however. The low reliability, taken together with the fact that Study 2 participants would not have in-service experiences in schools, led us to the decision to substitute the RIS as our religious sensitive measure for Study 2. Although we did find consistency in the relation between knowledge and religious sensitivity across studies, there are clear limitations in our ability to interpret and generalize them.

Finally, this study suffers the same methodological limitations of any correlational research. Our findings demonstrate the relations among our variables, and existing theory suggests how one might interpret them. It is not possible, however, to infer the causal nature of the relations using this type of research design. We do provide the necessary preliminary foundation for future lines of research, however. Researchers interested in furthering our understanding of these relations should consider experimental designs that demonstrate the temporal precedence of the independent variables. For example, setting up an experimental group of school personnel who receives professional development aimed at providing education on the First Amendment and its application in regard to religious expression in schools, and a corresponding control group that does not receive such training, would provide us an opportunity assert whether or not increasing such knowledge leads to lower levels of religious intolerance. Alternatively, researchers could employ longitudinal, cross-lagged designs that may replicate our findings, thus providing some evidence of a causal nature among the variables.

Conclusion

The present studies demonstrated that knowledge about public school students’ right to religious expression is related to tolerance and sensitivity toward religious groups and practices. Study 2 showed that this relation was partially explained by RWA. Further, school personnel with more service years tended to know less about the law than school personnel with fewer service years. Taken together, our findings suggest that pre-service training and professional development should include a focus on laws about religious expression in public schools and psycho-education about different religious practices. This information may be of particular value considering that the majority of teachers in the United States report being of Christian faith, while the demographic makeup of students is becoming increasingly diverse (Pew Research Center, 2015).

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

ACLU (2015) ACLU comment on Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signing discriminatory ‘religious freedom' bill into law. Available at: www.aclu.org/news/aclu-comment-indiana-gov-mike-pence-signing-discriminatory-religious-freedom-bill-law (accessed 2 May 2016).

Akiba M, Cockrell KS, Simmons JC, et al. (2010) Preparing teachers for diversity: Examination of teacher certification and program accreditation standards in the 50 states and Washington, DC. Equity & Excellence in Education 43: 446–462.

Alexander

(2012) American Public School Law, 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Altemeyer

(1988) Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-wing Authoritarianism, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

American Family Association (2015) School threatens student for saying ‘God bless America'. Available at: www.afa.net/action-alerts/school-threatens-student-for-saying-god-bless-america/ (accessed 2 May 2016).

Anti-Defamation League (1999) Public schools: Teaching democracy, not dogma. Separation of Church and State. Available at: www.adl.org/ (accessed 2 May 2016).

Aosved

Long

(2006) Co-occurrence of rape myth acceptance, sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism, classism, and religious intolerance. Sex Roles 55: 481–492.

Aosved

Long

Voller

(2009) Measuring sexism, racism, sexual prejudice, ageism, classism, and religious intolerance: The Intolerant Schema Measure. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 39: 2321–2354.

Banyasz

Tokar

Kaut

(2014) Predicting religious ethnocentrism: Evidence for a partial mediation model. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 8: 25–34.

10.

Baron

Kenny

(1986) The moderator-mediator distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51: 1173–1182.

11.

Barrett

Pearson

Muller

, et al.(2007) Adolescent religiosity and school contexts. Social Science Quarterly 88: 1024–1037.

12.

Bentley-Williams

Morgan

(2013) Inclusive education: Pre-service teachers' reflexive learning on diversity and their challenging role. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 41: 173–185.

13.

Caricati

Mancini

Marletta

(2017) The role of ingroup threat and conservative ideologies on prejudice against immigrants in two samples of Italian adults. Journal of Social Psychology 157: 86–97.

14.

Chaves

(2011) American Religion: Contemporary Trends, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

15.

Cobern

Loving

Davis

, et al.(2013) An empirical examination of the warfare metaphor with respect to pre-service elementary teachers. Journal of Science Education and Technology 22: 488–499.

16.

Craig

Richeson

(2014) Not in my backyard! Authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and support for strict immigration policies at home and abroad. Political Psychology 35: 417–429.

17.

Cramer

Miller

Amacker

, et al.(2013) Openness, right-wing authoritarianism, and antigay prejudice in college students: A mediational model. Journal of Counseling Psychology 60: 64–71.

18.

Crouch R and Zakariya SB (2012) The United States of education: The changing demographics of the United States and their schools. Available at: www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Staffingstudents/Changing-Demographics-At-a-glance/The-United-States-of-education-The-changing-demographics-of-the-United-States-and-their-schools.html#sthash.aEqTHUFG.dpuf (accessed 9 December 2017).

19.

Dedeoglu

Lamme

(2011) Selected demographics, attitudes, and beliefs about diversity of preservice teachers. Education and Urban Society 43: 468–485.

20.

Equal Access Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-377, 98 Stat. 1302 (1984).

21.

Fine-Davis

Faas

(2014) Equality and diversity in the classroom: A comparison of students’ and teachers’ attitudes in six European countries. Social Indicators Research 119: 1319.

22.

Frankenberg E and Siegel-Hawley G (2008) Are teachers prepared for racially changing schools? Teachers describe their preparation, resources and practices for racially diverse schools. Available at: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/are-teachers-prepared-for-racially-changing-schools/frankenberg-are-teachers-prepared-racially.pdf (accessed 4 December 2017).

23.

Ghaffar-Kucher

(2012) The religification of Pakistani-American youth. American Educational Research Journal 49: 30–52.

24.

Gini

Marino

Pozzoli

, et al.(2018) Associations between peer victimization, perceived teacher unfairness, and adolescents' adjustment and well-being. Journal of School Psychology 67: 56–68.

25.

Goodnight

Cook

Parrott

, et al.(2014) Effects of masculinity, authoritarianism, and prejudice on antigay aggression: A path analysis of gender-role enforcement. Psychology of Men & Masculinity 15: 437–444.

26.

Gorski

(2017a) American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

27.

Gorski P (2017b) Why evangelicals voted for Trump: A critical cultural sociology. Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics 5: 165–183.

28.

Gorsuch

McPherson

(1989) Intrinsic/extrinsic measurement: I/E revised in single item scales. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28: 348–354.

29.

Griffith

(2008) Beyond diversity and multiculturalism: Pluralism and the globalization of American religion. OAH Magazine of History 22: 24–27.

30.

Han

(2013) “These things do not ring true to me”: Preservice teacher dispositions to social justice literature in a remote state teacher education program. The Urban Review 45: 143–166.

31.

Hayes

(2009) Beyond Baron and Kenny: Statistical mediation analysis in the new millennium. Communication Monographs 76: 408–420.

32.

Hayes

(2013) Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-based Approach, New York: Guilford.

33.

Haynes CC and Thomas O (2007) Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Schools. Nashville, TN: First Amendment Center. Available at: http://www.religiousfreedomcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Religion-in-the-Public-School-Curriculum-Questions-and-Answers.pdf (accessed 21 December 2018).

34.

Jeynes

(2003) The effects of Black and Hispanic 12th graders living in intact families and being religious on their academic achievement. Urban Education 38(1): 35–57.

35.

Johnson

Labouff

Rowatt

, et al.(2012) Facets of right-wing authoritarianism mediate the relationship between religious fundamentalism and attitudes toward Arabs and African Americans. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51(1): 128–142.

36.

Johnson

Rowatt

LaBouff

(2010) Priming Christian religious concepts increases racial prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science 1: 119–126.

37.

Laats

(2012) Our schools, our country: American evangelicals, public schools, and the Supreme Court decisions of 1962 and 1963. Journal of Religious History 36: 319–334.

38.

Lee

Reid

Short

, et al.(2013) Fear of Muslims: Psychometric evaluation of the Islamophobia Scale. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 5: 157–171.

39.

Lemon v. Kurtzman, 411 U.S. 192 (1973).

40.

Mahdi

Al-Dera

(2013) The impact of teachers' age, gender and experience on the use of information and communication technology in EFL teaching. English Language Teaching 6: 57–67.

41.

McAllister

Irvine

(2000) Cross cultural competency and multicultural teacher education. Review of Educational Research 70: 3–24.

42.

Milner

Flowers

Moore

, et al.(2003) Preservice teachers' awareness of multiculturalism and diversity. The High School Journal 87: 63–70.

43.

National Center for Education Statistics (2013) Digest of Education Statistics. Available at: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_209.10.asp (accessed 9 April 2018).

44.

Peterson

Duncan

Pang

(2002) Authoritarianism and political impoverishment: Deficits in knowledge and civic disinterest. Political Psychology 23: 97–112.

45.

Pew Research Center (2015) America’s changing religious landscape. Available at: www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ (accessed 17 September 2018).

46.

Preacher

Hayes

(2004) SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 36: 717–731.

47.

Preacher

Hayes

(2008) Contemporary approaches to assessing mediation in communication research. In: Hayes

Slater

Synder

(eds) The Sage Sourcebook of Advanced Data Analysis Methods for Communication Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 13–54.

48.

Schwadel

(2010) Period and cohort effects on religious non-affiliation and religious disaffiliation: A research note. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49: 311–319.

49.

Schwadel

(2013) Changes in Americans’ views of prayer and reading the bible in public schools: Time periods, birth cohorts, and religious traditions. Sociological Forum 28: 261–282.

50.

Shook

Ford

Boggs

(2017) Dangerous worldview: A mediator of the relation between disgust and social conservatism. Personality and Individual Differences 119: 252–261.

51.

Sibley

Harding

Perry

, et al.(2010) Personality and prejudice: Extension to the HEXACO personality model. European Journal of Personality 24: 515–534.

52.

Taylor

Chatters

(2010) Importance of religion and spirituality in the lives of African Americans, Caribbean Blacks and non-Hispanic Whites. Journal of Negro Education 79: 280–294.

53.

Taylor

Kumi-Yeboah

Ringlaben

(2016) Pre-service teachers' perceptions towards multicultural education & teaching of culturally & linguistically diverse learners. Multicultural Education 23: 42–48.

54.

Tienda

Haskins

(2011) Immigrant children: Introducing the issue. Future of Children 21: 3–18.

55.

Tilson

Venkateswaran

(2004) Toward a peaceable kingdom: Public relations and religious diversity in the U.S. Public Relations Quarterly 49: 37–44.

56.

U.S. Census Bureau (2012) Self-described religious identification of adult population: 1990, 2001, and 2008. Available at: www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0075.pdf (accessed 14 February 2017).

57.

U.S. Const. amend. I., 1789.

58.

Warf

Winsberg

(2008) The geography of religious diversity in the United States. Professional Geographer 60: 413–424.

59.

Warnick

(2012) Student rights to religious expression and the special characteristics of schools. Educational Theory 62: 59–74.

60.

Westside Community Schools v. Mergers, 496 U.S. 226 (1990).

61.

Weyns

Colpin

De Laet

, et al.(2018) Teacher support, peer acceptance, and engagement in the classroom: A three-wave longitudinal study in late childhood. Journal of Youth & Adolescence 47: 1139–1150.

62.

Whitehead

Perry

Baker

(2018) Make America Christian again: Christian nationalism and voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Sociology of Religion 79: 147–171.

63.

Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263 (1981).

64.

Yuan

(2018) Preparing teachers for diversity: A literature review and implications from community-based teacher education. Higher Education Studies 8: 9–17. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com.wiulibraries.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1168438&site=ehost-live (accessed 2 June 2018).