Teaching ethnically and culturally diverse classrooms entails challenges for European school systems, especially in light of the significant incidence of students of immigrant origin. For policy-makers and school leaders it is important to have reliable information concerning educators’ perceptions and practices pertaining to ethnic and cultural diversity in educational contexts, especially as the number of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers across the world continues to grow.

This study comprises a secondary analysis of data collected in the 2018 edition of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) promoted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). More specifically, and firstly, it focuses on *school administrators’* perceptions of the presence of multiple cultural and ethnic backgrounds in schools and the implementation of diversity practices. Secondly, it focuses on *teachers’* perceptions regarding the same topics. And, thirdly, since the information collected among principals and teachers focuses on the same topics, it is also possible to explore *the degree to which they agree*, that is, whether educators working in the same school give convergent or conflicting accounts of their shared reality.

The analysis adopts a comparative European perspective, as it focuses on the 9 most populous Western European countries (among those participating in TALIS): Austria, Belgium, England, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Besides delivering a portrait of cultural and ethnic diversity in schools, this study also develops critical reflections concerning the way in which TALIS explores these issues – a particularly worthy concern, as the TALIS initiative is intended to provide robust evidence for policy-making in the field of education.

As regards the overarching theme of cultural diversity, the conceptual framework adopted in TALIS 2018 (Ainley and Carstens 2018) adopts the standpoint of Ely and Thomas (2001), juxtaposing “equity” approaches (which emphasise colour-blind diversity policies and tend to be associated with assimilation strategies) with “multiculturalism” (which acknowledges diversity as a source of social and educational enrichment and promotes openness towards “other” cultures). Both approaches appear capable of having beneficial effects on immigrant-origin student learning, but TALIS appears to lean towards “multiculturalism”.

TALIS thus adopts a multi-actor design and provides an opportunity to assess the magnitude of discrepancies between respondents’ answers (and identify their correlates). Since sampled principals and teachers work in the same schools, their responses can be matched to ascertain whether their responses coincide. It seems reasonable to assume that responses should concur, as long as principals and teachers are well informed about the nature of the student bodies attend their schools and about the activities that their schools put in place to address ethnic and cultural diversity. Are principals who state that their schools feature students of more than one cultural or ethnic background backed up by their teachers? Do teachers and principals agree as regards the diversity practices performed in tier schools? The degree of such consonance lies at the crux of the following analyses and may shed light on how both categories of educators perceive cultural diversity.

This study comprises original analyses of the 2018 edition of TALIS, a programme of international, large-scale sample surveys. Questionnaires were administered to teachers and school leaders to collect data on working conditions and teaching environments. The main focus of the survey is lower secondary education (Ainley and Carstens, 2018; OECD, 2019a; 2019b). For 9 Western European countries considered here, the pertinent unweighted random samples comprise over 2,000 school leaders (at least 125 in each country) and over 34,000 teachers (at least 1,800 in each country). The variables of major interest are drawn from the questionnaires administered to school principals and teachers in the above-mentioned 9 countries. The school administrator questionnaire contains a section titled “Schooling in Diverse Environments”, dealing with “school policies and practices concerned with diversity, with an emphasis on cultural diversity”. The section’s introduction states that “‘diversity’ refers to the recognition of and appreciation for differences in the backgrounds of students and staff. In the case of cultural diversity it refers most notably to cultural or ethnic backgrounds”. The questions concerning cultural diversity are a simple “yes/no” item and a battery of an additional four “yes/no” queries. Firstly, principals are asked “Does this school include students of more than one cultural or ethnic background?”. Secondly, if the school leader answers “yes”, he/she is asked to proceed with the following item set: “In this school, are the following policies and practices in relation to diversity implemented”?: – supporting activities or organisations that encourage students’ expression of diverse ethnic and cultural identities (e.g., artistic groups); – organising multicultural events (e.g., cultural diversity day); – teaching students how to deal with ethnic and cultural discrimination; – adopting teaching and learning practices that integrate global issues throughout the curriculum. The teacher questionnaire hosts a similar section, labelled “Teaching in Diverse Environments”, featuring the same framing text and identically worded items. Analysis is based on the implementation of dyad- (single teacher x administrator) and polyad-based (multiple teachers in same school x administrator) typologies. Standard bivariate and multivariate descriptive statistical analysis are employed.

To a relatively high degree, school administrators and teachers view the underlying reality of their schools in the same way as regards the make-up of student bodies and the implementation of diversity activities. But to a non-negligible degree they also do *not*. The development of dyad- and polyad-based typologies is shown to be useful, in that divergence among educators is appreciably more widespread than mere comparison of distinct frequency distributions would suggest. On the whole, multiple-background acknowledgement and diversity activity implementation appear to be more widespread in schools featuring a relatively high incidence of “culturally challenged/ing students” (i.e., whose first language is not the language of instruction, who have an immigrant background or who are refugees). This, in turn, leads to lower levels of principal-teacher divergence among the latter schools: higher engagement levels mean fewer opportunities for disagreement. The analyses also highlight some poor operationalizations adopted in TALIS. For example, the battery of diversity activity items is characterized by a narrow focus on few (only four) activities, that appear to prioritize the afore-mentioned “multicultural” approach over the “equity” perspective. Perhaps the most egregious operationalization shortcoming in TALIS is the fact that the diversity activity item battery is administered only to educators who acknowledge the presence of multiple cultural-ethnic backgrounds in their schools, implicitly adopting the assumption that diversity activities are unimportant and/or absent in culturally homogeneous educational contexts.

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