Culturally responsive teaching: beliefs of pre-service teachers in the Viennese context

ABSTRACT

This study aims to contribute to the discussion of culturally responsive teacher education by asking pre-service teachers’ beliefs about their readiness, strengths and needs to teach in culturally diverse classrooms. Participants were pre-service teachers (N = 453) studying in three different teacher education institutions in Vienna via a questionnaire including both open-ended and close-ended questions as the data collection instrument. Quantitative findings show that pre-service teachers hold a fair level of readiness in several skills for responding to culturally diverse classrooms, while qualitative findings present the pre-service teachers’ deep trust in their characteristics and their personal attitude to cultural diversity as their strengths. Findings also show that pre-service teachers are challenged with two issues: anxiety about their own poor cross-cultural knowledge and their prospective students’ poor language skills. The study also reaches the suggestions of pre-service teachers to teacher education programs about how to become more culturally responsive.

KEYWORDS:

• Multicultural education
• multicultural teacher education
• pre-service teacher education
• culturally responsive teaching
• pre-service teacher beliefs

Introduction

Due to the continuous movement of people, societies are inevitably getting more culturally diverse; and the changing profile of the societies affects the profile of school communities and creates culturally diverse classrooms (Moloney and Saltmarsh 2016). As a result, many teachers are challenged by the cultural diversity in their classrooms, as they do not have the training for it. While the change in the demographics of classrooms is not a problem itself, the problem lies in how teachers respond to that change, especially, when there is a mismatch between teachers’ and students’ backgrounds (Brown 2003). Given the idea that teachers are the ones who transmit the curriculum and put the educational plans and policies into practice, culturally responsive teachers are required to respond to the needs of culturally diverse classrooms(Gay 2010; Villegas and Lucas 2002). In the literature, various definitions and duties are attributed to culturally responsive teachers, but they have a relative agreement that cultural responsiveness requires going beyond the knowledge of the diversity; and it requires teacher education institutions holding the responsibility of training these prospective teachers (Gay 2010). However, the number of teacher education programmes that do not handle teacher education for culturally diverse classroom effectively is still very high (Premier and Miller 2010; Villegas and Lucas 2002). To decide how teacher education fulfils this duty, as Valentin (2006) suggests, we need to deal with how teachers or pre-service teachers perceive their readiness, which can give us valuable information about the teacher education’ condition, success and the future steps to take.

As a country where every fourth schoolkid has migration background (Statistic Austria, 2018), Austria has linguistically, religiously and culturally diverse school settings. This demographic structure changes from one state to another and the rate of students with migration background reaches 51.2% in the schools of the capital city Vienna, which calls for educational settings and principals, teachers and teacher education that can respond to that diversity. However, intercultural learning has limited implementation in school settings and coverage in textbooks in Austria (Luciak and Khan-Svik 2008). On the other hand, the relevant literature on multicultural and intercultural education in Austrian teacher education does not rely on pre-service teachers, and is limited to few studies with teachers that date back to the early years of 2000s. As Kanpol and Brady (1998) indicated two decades ago, Austria struggled with training culturally responsive teachers in its teacher education. In later years, Furch (2005), who analysed the curriculum of fourteen Austrian teacher education institutions, also concluded that intercultural learning or teaching is offered only in six institutions under the humanities or didactics courses rather than as a core topic of a course. Furch (2005) also indicated that teachers have a partial understanding of what intercultural education principles are. Furch’s study found that teachers had familiarity with various cultures due to their classroom profiles; however, they were adhering to stereotypes and highlighted the presence of cultural differences. Her results were strengthened with a relatively small-scale study conducted with teachers by Strohmeier and Fricker (2007), who found that the understanding of interculturalism and multiculturalism is subject to teachers’ attitudes. In another study, Binder and Daryabegi (2003) concluded that teachers’ implementation of intercultural principles is restricted to their interest and their understanding of the term ‘culture’.

This study

The present study starts from the ideas above to bring an understanding of the culturally responsive teacher preparation in Austria as well as to strengthen the refinement of the discussion about cultural responsiveness. It builds itself upon a design where quantitative techniques merge with qualitative ones to amplify findings and where pre-service teachers provide the data.

Contemporary research shows that exploring the perceptions of pre-service teachers is one of the best ways to see what pre-service teachers’ beliefs are and how much they benefit from the efforts of teacher education programs for cultivating culturally responsive teachers. In their evaluative qualitative study, Henkin and Steinmetz (2008) found that pre-service teachers can provide reliable results to judge the effectiveness of courses in teacher education for raising cultural sensitiveness. Similarly, the study by Seeberg and Minick (2012) used observation and note-taking techniques while listening to pre-service teachers’ self-reflection and found that the way the course is offered in a teacher education programmes improves cross-cultural awareness. On the other hand, some other studies (Haj-Broussard and Henny 2009; Spraldin 2009) used pre-test-post-test design and close-ended questionnaires in their course evaluation. These studies surveyed the perceptions of pre-service teachers about their attitude to teach in culturally diverse classrooms after taking a course on multicultural education. The results of these studies indicated that courses about multicultural education helped pre-service teachers to develop positive attitudes, skills, and knowledge of diversity and hold a social justice perspective, and to find out that recruiting pre-service teachers themselves as data sources is a good way.

To close the gap in the literature about culturally responsive teacher preparation in Austria, this relatively large-scale study surveyed mid-career Viennese pre-service teachers from various teacher education institutions. The questions that this study attempted to answer were:

• How do pre-service teachers rate their readiness to teach in culturally diverse classrooms?

• How do pre-service teachers perceive their strengths, needs, and predictions to teach in culturally diverse classrooms?

• What are pre-service teachers’ suggestions for teacher education programs to build readiness for teaching in culturally diverse classrooms?

Method

Design

To shed light on the research questions, a survey design was implemented through a questionnaire including both open and close-ended items. The quantitative method allowed making deductions (Borrego, Douglas, and Amelink 2009) and the qualitative method allowed a holistic description of the pre-service teachers’ making sense of their training (Fraenkel and Wallen 2006). As Santoro (2009) suggests, pedagogical practices can be considered as the reflection of the combination of sets of knowledge. Hence, the pedagogical practices of teachers can give a hint about the culturally responsive competences of teachers. With a rating scale, we focused on pre-service teachers’ beliefs regarding their pedagogical skills for their future pedagogical practices in culturally diverse classrooms. However, we did not limit the possible findings to a rating scale, and we gave space to our participants to explain their ideas and perspectives through open-ended questions.

Research site

The study was conducted in three different teacher education institutions in Vienna.

These institutions were one university and two teacher-training colleges. The aim of including diverse types of teacher education institutions was to reach pre-service teachers who will work in different school levels and get a comprehensive picture of teacher education in the country.

There are different pathways for teacher education in Austria. The duration, status, qualification or admission of the teacher education varies according to school type to work. Teacher education generally is offered at non-university tertiary level, and university level. Teacher education institutions have to follow national laws defined by the School Organisation Act and defined structure, aims, subjects and content of teacher education programs. Thus, all institutions of teacher education in Austria are similar in structure (Schratz and Resinger 2003).

The first data provider institution was the university that trains teachers for upper secondary schools and the lower secondary cycle of academic schools in Vienna. It offers a four-year dual program where pre-service teachers can select two among 28 different subject majors and is the biggest teacher provider in the city. This institution is the largest teacher provider in the country.

The second and third data provider institutions were the two largest teacher-training colleges in Vienna. The colleges offer three-year training in five different teacher education programs. These are teacher education for primary schools,for technical–vocational schools, for lower secondary schools, for religious education and special education schools.

The specific curriculum for preparing teachers for culturally diverse classrooms have a similar focus in three of these institutions. In each institution, pre-service teachers should take two courses (10 ECTS) from the module that tackles the topics related to cultural diversity. The data provider university offers its students a module that has a broad variety ranging from gender, language or background diversity to migration studies. In the two other institutions, the modules have more focus on multilingual perspectives such as training pre-service teachers for German as a second language, communication, interaction, and linguistic diversity.

Population and sample

The target population of the study was all pre-service teachers who study in the largest three teacher education institutions in Vienna. These three institutions were selected purposively to be able to reach pre-service teachers from all types of teacher education programs. These institutions provided data from pre-service teachers for primary, lower secondary and upper secondary school levels. The accessible population was the pre-service teachers in the available classrooms of the above-mentioned three teacher education institutions and reached 465 volunteer participants to fill the instrument.

Participants

Of the 465 respondents, 12 instruments were eliminated from the study because they were either partially filled in or filled in by an exchange student. Ultimately, a total of N = 453 respondents comprised the sample for this study. Most of our respondents were female (n = 360, 79.5%), while one fifth were male (n = 93, 20.5%) and the main subject majors were primary education, German, history, and English. The majority (78.1%) finished at least three semesters in teacher education, and the mean for the grade was 2.33 as our participants were either sophomores or upper graders. Most of the respondents were in their early twenties, and the mean average of the age was 23.75. The languages spoken within the families were also asked to see the percentage of multilingual participants. Only about 10% (N = 45) of the participants selected more than one family language while the majority (90%) selected only German, showing that we surveyed mainly monolingual German-speaking pre-service teachers. Finally, almost all of the participants were Austrian born (n = 404, 89.2%) while a small number was non-Austrian born (n = 49, 10.8%).

Instrument

The survey instrument in this study is a self-developed written-response questionnaire with both close-ended and open-ended questions. In order to develop the data collection instrument, several steps were taken. First, we cared that its content was in compliance with the literature, and we conducted the document analyses of educational policy papers at the institutional level, and the informal talks with pre-service teachers and teacher educators of the first author in the selected institutions. Finally, we received consistent feedback from experts in the field of educational research for its face and content validity.

The questionnaire started with an introduction section where the participants could find the aim of the study, the aim of the questionnaire, contact emails, name and affiliation of the researchers. The introduction part also assured that the participation was voluntary and participants could quit the study any time they wanted.

The questionnaire consisted of three different parts. In the first part, participants were asked some background questions while at the second part they rated their competence on a 5- point Likert-Type Scale (1 = very poor, 2 = poor, 3 = fair, 4 = good, 5 = very good) for seven items.

The agreement of the two researchers decided the items after getting feedback from preservice teachers as well as teacher educators. In the scale, we asked pre-service teachers to rate their readiness for;

1. creating awareness and respect for cultural diversity among students

2. creating awareness and respect for the diversity of languages among students

3. preventing prejudice and negative stereotyping of students against diverse cultures

4. managing conflicts that can result from the cultural diversity

5. achieving collaboration among students from different cultural backgrounds

6. including various cultures in lesson planning

7. designing teaching materials that include the diverse cultures existing in classroom

The third part of the survey included four open-ended questions to delve in-depth into the self-evaluations of pre-service teachers regarding teaching for multicultural classrooms and triangulate the responses with the answers to the close-ended items. The first three questions asked the strengths, needs, and predictions regarding teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. The final question asked the suggestions to teacher education programs.

For the pilot study, a classroom with 24 pre-service teachers was conveniently chosen. In this class, pre-service teachers were in their mid-career in their teacher education. Twenty one of them volunteered to participate in the pilot study. The pilot study provided useful information about several important points including general layout and item formation.

Validity and reliability

For the trustworthiness of the study, validity and reliability checks of the instrument were performed respectively. For the instrument, validity check was done to ensure that the data provided by the instrument could be used to draw accurate results (Fraenkel and Wallen 2006) while the reliability check was performed to ensure the instrument would give consistent results (Morris and Fitz-Gibbon 1978).

Consistent expert suggestion promised content validity by making judgements about the relevance of the instrument to the purpose of the study. Additionally, an expert on face validity examined the instrument and provided beneficial feedback user-friendliness and overall format of the questionnaire. To assess the reliability on the rating scale (N = 7), the α value was found to be α =.89 which are above the value suggested by Fraenkel and Wallen (2006) and Morris and Fitz-Gibbon (1978).

Data collection

After the expert validation of the last version of the questionnaire, the questionnaire was conducted at the agreed time according to the agreed schedule with the volunteer participants. The cross-sectional survey was administered directly to the available participants by the first author. Data collection started with explaining the status of the researcher, the value of the study for the participants, and its confidentiality. We believe that this sincerity helped to have a high response rate in a short period of data collection and helped to eliminate mortality threat to the internal validity of the survey.

Data analysis

The study provided quantitative and qualitative data. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses (one-way ANOVA) were performed by using the Statistical Package of the Social Sciences Software (SPSS 20.0). For the all statistical analyses, assumptions of independent observation, the normality of populations from which samples were selected (Skewness and Kurtosis tests, histograms, stem-and-leaf plots, P-P plots, and Q-Q plots) and homogeneity of variances (Levene’s test) were checked for the tests performed and no violation occurred (Green and Salkind 2004).

The qualitative data collected with open-ended questions were analysed through inductive content analysis. To compare the quantitative findings with qualitative findings, the qualitative data were ‘quantified’ (Creswell 2003, 220). Qualitative data were converted to numbers by forming codes and counting how many times these codes occurred. In this study, categories and codes were not determined beforehand, but they emerged during the data analysis.

Before coding all the data, a sample of 52 questionnaires was chosen randomly among the total 453 questionnaires. We did this systematically for 11% of the data by picking every ninth questionnaire in the sample. For the reliability check, we coded this preliminary sample two times. This test-retest (Krippendorff 1980) method was done to see how much we agreed on our coding over a certain period. The consistency value between the first and the second coding was calculated for four questions separately and all the consistency values between the first and second coding were found to be above 80%.

To assure the reproducibility (Krippendorff 1980), an inter-coder analysed the preliminary sample to check if the content analysis is reliable and the codes are consistent with another coder. The codes formulated by the researchers and by the inter-coder were compared. The percent agreement rate between coders ensured the reliability of the analysis according to agreement values suggested by Lombard, Snyder-Duch, and Bracken (2004).

After reliable coding was set, we tabulated the frequencies of the codes in the preliminary sample and went on coding the rest of the data. All the rest of the data were coded according to the codes formulated with the preliminary code list. However, during the analysis, some codes emerged or combined with other codes. During coding and categorising, we negotiated until two researchers arrived at a decision for assigning codes to the corresponding categories and for merging or splitting categories. At the end of coding, all codes tabulated and listed under the relevant categories and sub-categories and the frequencies of the codes were counted. Ultimately, three themes emerged and were reported as: Strengths related to traits and professional skills (Theme 1); need for multicultural pedagogy (Theme 2); and finally, challenges, rewards, and suggestions (Theme 3). These findings are presented in the Table 1

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the rating scale (N = 453)

Perceived Readiness for	M	SD
Preventing stereotyping and prejudice of students	3.49	1.02
Creating awareness and respect for cultural diversity	3.28	1.06
Building cooperation, rapport btw students from diverse cultures	3.23	.99
Including various cultures in lesson planning	3.21	1.05
Designing materials including diverse cultures in the classroom	3.00	1.06
Managing conflicts that result from cultural diversity	2.92	.98
Creating awareness and respect for multilingualism	2.75	1.01

Table 2

Table 2. One-way ANOVA summary for teacher education institution (N = 269)

Source	SS	Df	MS		F
Between groups	1,392	2	.696		1.807*
Within groups	102,477	266	.385
Total	103,869	268

*p > .05

Table 3 altogether.

Table 3. Qualitative findings

Strengths about Traits and Professional Skills	f
Openness to other cultures	99
Interest in other cultures	63
Early-life experiences	57
Patience	52
Tolerance	49
Not prejudiced	44
Inclusive teaching	41
Pedagogical tact	38
Conflict management	32
Need for Multicultural Pedagogy	f
Knowledge of other cultures	154
Knowledge of other languages	104
Knowledge on the background of own students	54
Classroom management skills	131
More training on multicultural teaching	67
More experience in multicultural classrooms	32
Challenges and Rewards	f
Language problems	193
Cultural challenges	168
Conflicts	148
Getting to know other cultures	112
Interesting teaching experience	34
Suggestions	f
Courses on multicultural teaching	86
Teaching experience in culturally diverse classrooms	74
Information on other cultures	61
Discussion about cultural diversity	50
Coping strategies	54
More teacher educators with migration background	20

Results

The quantitative and qualitative findings are presented successively.

Pedagogical skills for culturally diverse classroom

We calculated the scores for each item on the rating scale separately and provided the descriptive statistics. We found that the scores fluctuated around fair values (3) with 5 meaning very good and 1 very poor. As can be seen in Table 1, the perceived readiness level to create awareness and respect for diversity of languages (M = 2.75, SD = 1.01) and to manage conflicts in culturally diverse classrooms (M = 2.92, SD = 0.98) were the two items that could not pass the fair ‘3ʹ value, while creating an awareness of cultural diversity in the classroom (M = 3.28, SD = 1.06) and readiness for preventing prejudice and stereotyping of students against students with diverse cultures (M = 3.49, SD = 1.02) had the highest scores.

Teacher education institution

‘Teacher education institution’ was another concern for us as we included pre-service teachers from three different teacher education institutions. To examine if pre-service teachers from various institutions differed regarding their pedagogical competencies to be culturally responsive, we ran a one-way ANOVA. We asked the question; ‘Until now, have you taken any course(s) that address issues such as teaching for multiculturalism or multilingualism?’ We included definitions of these concepts and two options; ‘Yes, courses that had these issues as a main topic’ and ‘No.’ In this test, we included the participants who reported that they had taken courses for multicultural training (N = 269). In the performed ANOVA, the independent variable was teacher education institution with three categorical levels (university and two teacher-training colleges). The dependent variable was the readiness level about cultural responsiveness.

The results indicated that pre-service teachers studying in university and two different teacher-training colleges did not differ concerning their pedagogical competencies for responding to culturally diverse classrooms. The summary of ANOVA results is presented in Table 2 below.

Strengths related to traits and professional skills

The study revealed that pre-service teachers trust their abilities, including their prospective professional skills. For instance, they stated that they were aware of cultural diversity and felt open to other cultures (f = 99), especially, by showing interest in other cultures (f = 63), and some highlighted that they did not possess any prejudices against immigrants (f = 44). They also reported that their early life experiences in multicultural environments (f = 57) or coming from a migration background themselves (f = 30) were reasons to adopt positive traits such as patience (f = 52) and tolerance (f = 49). Therefore, pre-service teachers considered themselves powerful in that they would consider inclusive teaching by including all students with diverse backgrounds (f = 41). They also considered themselves pedagogically tact (f = 38) and ready to deal with conflict management (f = 32) (Theme 1).

Need for multicultural pedagogy

Although pre-service teachers positively evaluated their capacities, they still indicated a need to become more culturally knowledgeable and be equipped with more professional skills to handle culturally diverse classrooms. A considerable number of pre-service teacher reported that they needed more knowledge about other cultures (f = 154). Next, many also stated that they needed to know other languages than the official one (f = 104), especially, knowledge of a language in relation to the background of students was considered worthwhile (f = 54). In addition, pre-service teachers’ referred to needs regarding multicultural pedagogy such as classroom management skills (f = 131), how to teach for multicultural groups (f = 67) and gaining more experience in teaching for culturally diverse classrooms (f = 32) (Theme 2).

Challenges, rewards, and suggestions

Pre-service teachers’ visions of their future teaching experiences in culturally diverse classrooms revealed both challenging and rewarding predictions. Many pre-service teachers emphasised language problems (f = 193), cultural challenges (f = 168), and conflicts in the classroom (f = 148) as most cited challenges. As for their positive predictions, a considerable group listed learning other cultures (f = 112) and teaching in diverse classes as a rewarding experience (f = 34). Therefore, they suggested that teacher education programs should focus on developing multicultural awareness of pre-service teachers. They reported that they expected teacher education programs to include more courses about how to teach in a culturally diverse classroom (f = 86) and have personally more teaching experience possibilities in culturally diverse classrooms (f = 74). Many of them also suggested including knowledge about other cultures (f = 61) in the curriculum and discussion about cultural diversity in education (f = 50) and equip the pre-service teachers with coping strategies (f = 54) in diverse contexts. Although relatively limited, some suggested teacher education programs should recruit teacher educators who have more experience in culturally diverse classrooms and who possess a migrant background (f = 20) so that they could share their knowledge and experience in the development of teachers (Theme 3).

Discussion

The current study shows how pre-service teachers see their pedagogical competences, fears, anxieties, and predictions about teaching in culturally diverse classrooms, and includes their reported suggestions to teacher education institutions for teaching prospective teachers for culturally diverse schools. The findings of this study indicate that quantitative and qualitative findings complemented each other to draw a visible picture of the fair readiness of pre-service teachers.

The first noteworthy point to discuss is the fair pedagogical competencies for teaching in a culturally diverse classroom. We found that the effectiveness of the courses that are offered in multicultural teacher education programmes falls short in terms of training future teachers in a multicultural society. The ineffective culturally responsive teacher education found in Viennese teacher education institutions can be a result of an inadequate focus on required curriculum adaptations for raising culturally responsive teachers.

The next point is the lack of variety in the performance of different teacher education institutions. There was no significant difference in readiness level for teaching in culturally diverse classrooms with regard to different teacher education institutions. In Austria, the law guarantees academic freedom to universities, but they also need to adhere to national laws and defined basic structure, aims, and fields of study. Thus, all teacher education institutions in Austria resemble each other in structure (Schratz and Resinger 2003). The similarity in curriculum and the content of courses across various teacher education institutions could be the reason for finding no differences among pre-service teachers’ readiness level from various institutions.

Although the results paint a somewhat gloomy picture about the effectiveness of teacher education for improving culturally responsive competences, pre-service teachers’ beliefs were worthwhile data providers in this study. Pre-service teachers made it clear that they trust their capacities and their attitude towards other cultures as their strengths in teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. Believing in the power of one’s own personality and characteristics can be acknowledged as an individual readiness of pre-service teachers, as a member of a multicultural society. Pre-service teachers should have an understanding beyond respecting or accepting cultural diversity, and they need to have a critical understanding of the injustices, inequalities, and other social justice issues in society (Clayton 2003; Grant and Sleeter 2007; Nagayoshi 2011; Verkuyten 2006). The relatively higher scores on the scale for dealing with stereotypes and creating multicultural awareness, along with the responses about openness, tolerance or patience echoed the understanding of cultural diversity as something that needs to be accepted, respected, but at the same time endured. We can say that pre-service teachers in Vienna would not be inclined to develop a critical perspective to identify the social barriers that their prospective students may suffer from. They were ready to accept, understand, and respect other cultures and cultural diversity. However; teacher education institutions also need to address inequalities and injustices so that pre-service teachers can develop a critical perspective when confronting the (lack of) equity of opportunities in society.

A fear of managing diverse languages and cultural conflict in schools was obvious in the findings. The low readiness scores for creating multilingualism awareness and for keeping classrooms free of conflict was striking. These findings show what kind of a working environment pre-service teachers expected in their future career in multicultural classrooms. The emphasis on conflict management as a strength or need indicates that pre-service teachers considered cultural diversity to be a source of conflict that needed to be managed. However, as suggested by many scholars (Bennett 2007; Clayton 2003; Irvine 2001), cultural diversity should not be viewed as a source of problems, but as a source of enrichment. Teacher education programs should help pre-service teachers develop a positive attitude towards having cultural diversity in their classes. Otherwise, teachers cannot use the cultural diversity for the benefit of students and society (Smith 2009).

Pre-service teachers often held a negative view of having different languages in a classroom and the need for learning other languages. Experiencing language diversity in culturally diverse classrooms is not surprising (Padron and Knight 1990). Nevertheless, the pre-service teachers thought they would encounter language problems more than language richness in their future career. Surprisingly, pre-service teachers did not think of asking teacher education programs to educate how to cope with linguistic problems nor did they suggest the inclusion of a more language-specific programmes in teacher education. However, to cultivate culturally responsive teachers, teacher education programs need to include the aspect of how to handle linguistically diverse classrooms (Capella-Santana 2003). Hence, teacher education programmes need to teach pre-service teachers how to promote multilingualism, and how to create a language friendly environment, without oppressing other languages present in a classroom (Grant and Gillette 2006), while also trying to create a frame of communication with the target language.

The finding showed that pre-service teachers valued cultural knowledge more than the professional competences needed to work effectively in culturally diverse classrooms. ‘More knowledge about other cultures,’ which is highly needed for cultural responsiveness (Bennett 2007; Diller and Moule 2005; Savage 2010; Seeberg and Minick 2012; Villegas and Lucas 2002), was the most frequently cited wish in the study. As Lea (2010), Grant and Gillette (2006) and Irvine (2001) have suggested, cultural knowledge is important for being culturally responsive, and Viennese pre-service teachers seem to be willing to develop cultural knowledge. To reply to this wish, teacher education programs should provide more information about other cultures and also classroom management skills. In addition, pre-service teachers need to gain practice in concrete classroom environments with culturally diverse students in a context where cultural diversity is inevitable.

Another point to mention is the benefit of self-reflection. This study achieved the aim of encouraging pre-service teachers to reflect on their readiness, attitudes and early life experiences. Pre-service teachers reflected on their perceived strengths and also included any migration background and early life experiences with immigrants in their answers. As suggested by Grant and Gillette (2006), early life experiences and one’s own background may help teachers better understand the situation of their students. Austria, and especially Vienna, offers a social setting where people from various backgrounds can share the same neighbourhood or classrooms.

Implications

This study has implications for teacher education programmes that are developing teacher education programmes and curricula for culturally diverse classrooms. Asking pre-service teachers about their perceptions helped us to identify some key issues. Pre-service teachers were found to be ready to accept, understand, and respect other cultures, as well as cultural diversity. However; teacher education institutions did not seem to offer sufficient opportunities to pursue such understanding.

Regarding further research, real classroom environments need to be investigated as well. Even if teacher education programmes take all of the above-listed issues on board, these programmes can never insure that insights will be implemented effectively in real classroom environments. Hence, a longitudinal study needs to be conducted to determine the effect of better preparation when teachers go into the field and start teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. Also, such a longitudinal study can show if pre-service teachers’ predictions match their later experiences in culturally diverse classrooms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Seyda Subasi Singh

Seyda Subasi Singh currently holds a Postdoc researcher position at the University of Vienna where she teaches at the Department of Education and Department of Teacher Education both graduate and undergraduate courses. Her teaching concentrates on inclusive education, social cohesion, diversity and educational equity with an intersectional focus.

Hanife Akar

Hanife Akar is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the Department of Educational Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Her major research areas include comparative international higher education, educational policy, equity, civic and moral education, internal migration, and curriculum evaluation, contemporary issues in curriculum and instruction, and teacher education.