Measuring the multidimensionality of educators’ approaches to diversity: Development of the in-service teacher multicultural education model

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the latent construct of multicultural education (ME) among 1887 in-service teachers. Using existing ME scales and Banks’ five-pillar framework to capture relevant classroom, school, and community-level contexts, we generated and tested 48 survey items. This study revealed a six-factor model solution representing teachers’ ME. The model not only captured three factors that measure teachers’ multicultural capacities (multicultural efficacy, multicultural teaching practice, and multicultural beliefs), but it also identified three additional factors (school support, family and community interactions, and challenges and pushback) that may either enable or hinder the enactment of those capacities.