Diversity education and early childhood teachers’ motivation to remain in teaching: an exploration

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how preparation for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse children influences early childhood teachers’ motivation to remain in teaching. This study is grounded in Bandura’s self-efficacy theory. Early childhood teachers were sent an online survey and asked about their teacher preparation, job satisfaction, self-efficacy for teaching diverse children, and motivation to remain in teaching. Teachers who reported high motivation to remain were compared to teachers with 1) low motivation to remain and 2) teachers unsure about remaining. The teachers were compared on their years of teaching experience, job satisfaction, self-efficacy for teaching diverse children, and diversity education using one-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc test. The results suggest early childhood teachers with high motivation to remain had significantly more undergraduate coursework focused on diversity, felt their teacher education programs better prepared them for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse children, and did an effective job working with children from diverse backgrounds. Moreover, early childhood teachers with high motivation to remain had fewer years of teaching experience than teachers unsure about their motivation to remain. Implications will be discussed.