Conference Program

Increasingly multicultural classrooms require teachers to adopt different teaching approaches capable of responding to diverse learners (OECD 2025). Within Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), teaching styles range from motivating (autonomy-supportive) to demotivating (controlling) practices that influence the quality of classroom interactions (Aelterman et al., 2019; Reeve et al., 2022). Research suggests that teachers’ beliefs and contextual orientations — including their attitudes toward multicultural education — may function as important antecedents of how teaching styles are enacted (Buzzai et al., 2023). Multicultural attitudes are conceptualised as teachers’ awareness, acceptance, and valuing of cultural diversity, together with their disposition to integrate such diversity into educational practices. Beyond recognising diversity, education should also promote the skills, values, and conditions necessary for democratic dialogue across cultures and knowledge systems (UNESCO, 2021). These orientations are particularly relevant in learning environments, which play a crucial role in fostering inclusive attitudes and a sense of belonging among diverse learners (Gay, 2018). The present study, drawing on theoretical perspectives linking contextual beliefs to motivational teaching practices in multicultural settings, examines the relationship between multicultural attitudes and (de)motivating teaching styles among primary school teachers, while also exploring differences between in-service and pre-service teachers. Participants included 60 in-service primary teachers and 62 pre-service teachers enrolled in a degree program in Primary Education. More specifically, the pre-service teachers included in the sample were students who had completed at least 100 hours of supervised practicum in primary schools as part of their degree curriculum. Teachers completed validated self-report measures assessing multicultural attitudes using the Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey (Buzzai et al., 2023) and perceived teaching styles using the Situations-in-School questionnaire (Moè & Katz, 2020). Correlational analyses indicated that more positive multicultural attitudes were associated with stronger endorsement of motivating teaching styles and lower endorsement of demotivating styles. Group comparisons showed that pre-service teachers reported higher motivating tendencies and more positive multicultural attitudes, whereas in-service teachers displayed relatively higher demotivating orientations. These findings align with recent international evidence (OECD, 2025), which suggests that teachers who have completed their training more recently tend to feel more effective in multicultural classrooms. Although based on a small sample, these results provide preliminary insight into how professional context and attitudes toward diversity relate to teaching styles. Interpreted through an SDT lens, the findings suggest that multicultural orientations are connected with the motivational quality of instructional practices. Importantly, differences observed between professional stages highlight the need to address multicultural awareness and motivation-supportive teaching approaches early in teacher education, before contextual pressures potentially reshape instructional styles. Supporting such competencies during initial training may represent a key lever for fostering inclusive and motivating primary classroom environments.