Do General Multicultural Attitudes matter Beyond Other Teacher and Classroom related Factors? A Cross-Sectional Study on the Effect of Multicultural Attitudes on Cultural Responsive Teaching Attitudes.

Abstract

Teachers’ positive attitudes towards Culturally Responsive Teaching can improve the disadvantaged position of minority group students in the Netherlands (Henrichs et al., 2020). The main aim of this study was to explore if and how multicultural attitudes impact cultural responsive teaching attitudes, beyond other teacher and classroom related factors which are already known to be of considerable impact. Furthermore, this study provided insight into the question whether teachers can endorse multiple teaching attitudes at the same time. That is, a new developed questionnaire on three teaching attitudes (Krijnen et al., 2021) was investigated alongside the Dutch Multicultural Ideology Scale (Arends-Tóth & Van de Vijver, 2003) which measured multicultural attitudes. The teachers participating in this study were Dutch primary school teachers. Drawing from retrieved data, two positive correlations between the teaching attitudes scales were found. Along those lines, it could be concluded that teachers can endorse to multiple teaching attitudes. Furthermore, multicultural attitudes formed a factor of influence for teaching attitudes, beyond other teacher and classroom related factors. Practical implications of these findings will be discussed.