It’s all in the Mix: Exploring Predictors of Teachers’ Multicultural Beliefs towards Teaching Refugee Students

Abstract

Context: Despite the implementation of strategies designed to equip educators with the necessary cultural and linguistic responsiveness and related competencies, the education sector continues to face significant challenges in meeting the needs of these learners. This is primarily due to a mismatch between the demands of working with students from diverse backgrounds and the teacher training available. Moreover, researchers have repeatedly emphasized the importance of teachers' beliefs as a key element within teachers' pedagogical professionalism and teachers' implementation of diversity-sensitive teaching. The present study aims to examine the predictive role of teachers' characteristics (gender, perceptions of training), contact experiences, and classroom setting (special classes for refugees or mainstream classes, among others) on their multicultural beliefs.

Methods: This study examined the influence of personal and contextual factors on teachers' multicultural beliefs using data from the Refugees in the German Educational System (ReGES) study. Specifically, we analyzed data from Refugee Cohort 2, collected in 2018, which included 320 secondary school teachers (68% female) instructing refugee students aged 14-16 years. The research employed a quantitative approach, utilizing longitudinal and multi-informant data to investigate the predictive role of these factors on teachers' multicultural perspectives.

Results: The study's findings reveal significant variations in teachers' perceptions of their training for integrating refugee students and their levels of multicultural beliefs across different classroom settings. Regression analyses demonstrate that gender and classroom setting are predictive factors for teachers' multicultural beliefs. Contrary to expectations, however, teachers’ perceptions of in-service training and direct experiences with refugees accounted only for a small variance in their multicultural beliefs.

Conclusion: The results underscore the importance of considering contextual factors in understanding and fostering multicultural perspectives among educators working with refugee students. Furthermore, the results of the study accentuate the multifaceted nature of teachers' multicultural beliefs and underscore the necessity for further, more in-depth investigation into the formation of these beliefs and the factors that influence them.