| dc.description.abstract | Cultural diversity in schools is increasing and addressing educational inequalities faced by minority learners is imperative. The persistence of achievement gaps between native and immigrant students in contexts of social integration and inclusive education, such as the Norwegian, highlights the need of research on implicit mechanisms of inequality perpetuation.
Educators’ attitudes towards and expectations about minority background students significantly impact on their academic outcomes. Since most educational research on cultural diversity has focused on the negative effects of prejudices on achievement, the study of educators’ positive beliefs on cultural diversity is still needed. The aim of this study was to analyse the impact of professionals’ multicultural beliefs on their educational practices with culturally and linguistically diverse learners, as well as on the support they provide to students’ acculturation processes. Additionally, the relations between multilingual beliefs and types of linguistic support for second-language acquisition were examined. This cross-sectional research was based on survey data provided by the EU/H2020 funded project ISOTIS (Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society). Results showed that Norwegian educators hold strong multicultural belief, which were not associated with practices, but were related to the support of students’ multicultural identities and integration. Professionals' multilingual beliefs were significantly associated with the incorporation of students’ home-languages and with the encouragement of the mainstream language. Implications for future research and practice are considered. | en_US |