Abstract
Contemporary Europe is facing increased cultural and linguistic diversity (super-diversity), which raises questions on how western societies should deal with related topics, such as inequality, integration and inclusion. Inequality and social exclusion is rather persistent for some European groups (immigrant and ethnic minority families) and creating inclusive environments for children
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is a crucial step in tackling these inequalities. Professionals working in the education system fulfil a key role in this. To adequately equip professionals in dealing with super-diversity, we need to further strengthen their intercultural competences using adequate professional development. The current dissertation aims to provide new insights in this using data from a large international (ISOTIS) and national (LKK) research project.
Chapter 2 reports on a systematic literature review on how professional development efforts can improve intercultural competences of teachers. Based on our findings, we consider three elements most important when designing effective PD to enhance teachers’ intercultural competences: well-embedded within the context, guiding reflection, supporting enactment.
Chapter 3 reports on a study that investigated the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, intercultural classroom practices and the direct classroom context using cross-national data from ECEC and primary school teachers in England, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Teacher efficacy can be viewed as a two-dimensional concept in which both general self-efficacy beliefs relevant to most teaching situations are measured alongside diversity-related domain-specific beliefs. Differences in self-efficacy beliefs can be explained by classroom diversity. Teachers working in more diverse classrooms feel more efficacious working with diverse student populations and report they are more often engaged in intercultural classroom practices, which in turn provides them with new opportunities to build up their self-efficacy beliefs.
Chapter 4 reports on a study that investigated quality and inclusion in the Dutch hybrid ECEC system from an organizational perspective. Using latent class analysis we distinguished three different organization types: engaged professional organizations, commercial service-oriented corporations and traditional bureaucratic organizations. Engaged professional organizations invest in professional development of staff, have a strong social mission and reach out to parents and other local institutions. These organizations outperform the other types of organizations on several quality and inclusion measures and serve more children from a disadvantaged background.
Chapter 5 reports on the results of a cross-national study on the relation between integration of immigrant and ethnic-minority families and shared practices and beliefs of professionals. Overall, we found evidence that implicit and explicit policies at the local level create common ground for professionals, and that shared multicultural practices and beliefs relate positively to immigrant and ethnic-minority families’ acculturation process.
Concluding, the findings in this dissertation have revealed that strong intercultural competences of professionals working in early childhood and primary education are necessary to support the integration, inclusion and well-being of disadvantaged children, and that continuous, collaborative PD can help strengthen these competences. Moreover, our results highlight that it is not merely about strengthening the intercultural competences of individual professionals. Instead, we should assure that strong intercultural competences are anchored within the organization logics of organizations in the local support system.
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