Cultural Humility and Multicultural Teaching Competencies: Using a Person-Centered Approach to Explore Teacher Thriving and Burnout

Abstract

The rates of burnout and mental health concerns among teachers in the United States continue to rise. One area of well-being relates to an educator's ability to connect with students from cultural backgrounds that differ from their own, though some educators may not feel confident in this area . One approach to this skill discrepancy is to increase educators’ cultural humility. Educators who utilize cultural humility feel a high sense of self-efficacy, which buffers against burnout. In this study, we used a nationally recruited sample of N = 888 teachers. Using latent profile analysis, a three-class model was the most parsimonious, with the Culturally Engaged class yielding the highest scores in the areas of mattering, self-efficacy, cultural humility, and multicultural competencies, yet the lowest scores in job satisfaction and highest scores in burnout. Teachers who are between the ages of 25–35, have 6–10 years of experience, , are Black/African American, and indicated they would leave the profession earlier than expected were more likely to be in the Culturally Engaged profile.