Pre-service Primary Teachers' and Foreign Language Teachers' Preparedness for Dealing with Diversity

In today's society, which is significantly marked by diversity in various aspects of human life, accepting and respecting others who are different is crucial for building an inclusive and just society. This is also reflected in educational systems, which emphasize the importance of successfully integrating all students into educational processes while striving to develop openness and empathy towards other cultural and social groups. The preparedness of all primary education teachers for dealing with diversity in the classroom is of utmost importance in achieving these goals, but previous research often indicates certain deficits. Therefore, the aim of this research was to examine the preparedness of future primary education teachers and foreign language teachers for dealing with diversity in the classroom. The study involved 184 final-year students from the Faculty of Teacher Education and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. It was found that students exhibit a fairly high level of awareness of diversity in their teaching practice and of their role in pluralistic environments. However, the acquisition of competencies during their studies for working in such environments is assessed as weak. Such estimates of the respondents indicate a lack of integration of appropriate content into the study programs.