The role of professional development experiences, autonomy, and perceptions of school’s climate for multicultural background students in teacher’s self-efficacy in multicultural environments

The present study examined how the professional development experiences, teachers shared multicultural beliefs, and autonomy were related to teachers’ self-efficacy in multicultural environments. In addition, the study assessed the moderated mediating effects of autonomy on the relationship between teachers’ professional development experiences, teachers shared multicultural beliefs, and self-efficacy in multicultural environments. The sample consisted of 2,515 teachers in Taiwan from the 2018 PISA Teacher General Questionnaire. A latent moderated structural equation approach was used to estimate the main and interaction effects of teacher autonomy on the relationship between teachers’ professional development experiences, shared multicultural beliefs, and self-efficacy in multicultural environments. Results indicated that teachers shared multicultural beliefs had a mediating effect on the relationships between professional development and their self-efficacy. Autonomy was not found to have a statistically significant moderating effect on the mediation relationships between multicultural training experiences, shared multicultural beliefs, and self-efficacy. However, teacher autonomy still plays an important role in multicultural classrooms as a mediator between multicultural professional development experiences and teachers’ self-efficacy.