School adaptation of Roma children

This paper examines the degree of school adaptation among Roma children who were included in a program for the desegregation of Roma schools in Bulgaria. More specifically, the program requires Roma children to attend mixed classes with Bulgarian students and Roma teacher assistants to work with them. The Bulgarian version of the Questionnaire on School Adaptation, developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education was used. A factorial experimental design was applied to test the hypothesis that Roma children adapt better to school when they study in mixed classes with the support of a Roma teacher assistant rather than in homogeneous classes. As predicted, the results reveal that Roma students in mixed classes with Roma teacher assistants adapt better than Roma students in homogeneous classes on the most important indicators of adaptation.