Promoting pre-service teachers’ critical cultural and multilingual awareness and responsiveness, and beliefs about multilingualism through practice-oriented, (self‑)reflexive intervention

Educational inequalities affecting culturally and linguistically diverse students highlight the importance of teachers’ positive beliefs about multilingualism, critical cultural and multilingual awareness, and responsiveness. This quasi-experimental pre-post study investigates how pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism, awareness, and responsiveness can be promoted through a practice-oriented, (self-)reflexive opportunity to learn about culturally and linguistically responsive teaching. An intervention group ( n = 25) and a control group ( n = 15) completed a questionnaire about their beliefs and responded to videos depicting classroom situations in which teachers lacked awareness and responsiveness. Written responses were analyzed using quantitative content analysis based on a four-level coding manual. Awareness and responsiveness improved in both groups, but beliefs increased only in the intervention group and decreased in the control group. Overall, the intervention group improved more in beliefs and responsiveness than the control group, supporting the implementation of practice-oriented (self-)reflexive opportunities to learn about culturally and linguistically responsive teaching in teacher education. • Quasi-experimental pre-post intervention study with control group. • Tested changeability of pre-service teachers' beliefs about multilingualism. • Development of critical cultural, multilingual awareness and responsiveness. • Significant increase in beliefs, awareness, and responsiveness in both groups. • Intervention group with significantly greater gains in beliefs and responsiveness.