The diversity teaching beliefs scale: Addressing cultural diversity, communalities between cultures, and the national culture in the classroom

Abstract

This study describes the examination of a new multidimensional measure on teacher beliefs about diversity teaching: the Diversity Teaching Beliefs Scale (DTBS). The DTBS assesses three distinct dimensions of teachers' diversity beliefs: Acknowledging cultural differences (ACD), emphasizing cultural communalities (ECC), and socialization of the national culture (SNC). The findings of three studies on the psychometric properties of the DTBS provide support for its reliability and validity. Moreover, latent profile analyses indicated that the three teacher beliefs co-occurred in different combinations. Overall, the DTBS can be considered a useful instrument to capture the multidimensional nature of teachers’ diversity teaching beliefs.