The educational success of students from immigrant backgrounds is a central concern in both Quebec and Luxembourg, two contexts marked by significant ethnocultural, religious, and linguistic diversity. Despite political efforts to support inclusion, research continues to show persistent gaps in achievement between first-generation immigrant students and their native-born peers in both societies (MENJE et al., 2016). In this context, teachers play a determining role in supporting the academic and educational success of these students, not only through their pedagogical practices but also through their beliefs, convictions, and the competences they develop during their initial and further training (Mc Andrew, 2015). Yet little research has simultaneously examined teachers’ perceptions of their own preparation for diversity in these two comparable contexts.

This study explores how primary teachers in Quebec and Luxembourg perceive their initial training in relation to the competences required to support students from immigrant backgrounds, drawing on a qualitative-interpretive approach based on semi-structured interviews. The aim is to understand:

(1)  which competences teachers consider necessary in order to support the educational success of these students;

(2)  how they perceive their own training in relation to these competences;

(3)  how their beliefs, convictions, and implicit biases shape their practices; and

(4)  how these insights differ between Quebec and Luxembourg.

The conceptual framework mobilises four competency domains identified in the literature and reflected in teachers’ discourse: general knowledge, didactic competences, relational competences, and ethical competences (Mc Andrew, 2015; Potvin, Larochelle-Audet, et al., 2015). Four transversal competences emerge as central to effective support in diversity: plurilingual competence (Decke-Cornill & Küster, 2010), intercultural competence (Potvin, Borri-Anadon, et al., 2015), collaboration with families, schools and communities (Duong & Kanouté, 2007), and metareflection, i.e., the ability to reflect critically on one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Romijn et al., 2021).

Findings show that Luxembourg teachers emphasise the centrality of plurilingualism in their daily practice and consider this competence essential for supporting newly arrived students. However, they also report that their training places disproportionate emphasis on linguistic aspects while insufficiently addressing cultural and migratory dimensions, and almost not at all issues of racism, discrimination or implicit bias.

Quebec teachers, for their part, describe themselves as more accustomed to working in ethnoculturally diverse classrooms and report stronger competences in critical reflection, openness, and awareness of diversity-related issues. However, they also underline important gaps in their initial training regarding anti-racist education, implicit bias, and concrete strategies for supporting students from immigrant backgrounds – gaps already noted in the literature (Potvin et al., 2020).

Across both contexts, teachers highlight the limited transversal integration of diversity-related content in initial teacher education programmes, despite official expectations (MEQ, 2020; Université du Luxembourg, 2021). Teachers in both contexts thus feel insufficiently equipped to address the full complexity of diversity in the classroom.

These findings reveal that although Quebec and Luxembourg face similar challenges, their priorities and approaches differ: Quebec shows stronger reflexive and critical orientations, while Luxembourg demonstrates stronger plurilingual competences. Bringing these strengths together – integrating plurilingual pedagogies in Quebec and embedding structured reflexive and anti-racist approaches in Luxembourg – could significantly improve teacher preparation in both contexts.

The study contributes to comparative research on teacher education by highlighting the importance of combining linguistic, intercultural, relational and ethical competences, integrated across training curricula, to better support the educational success of students from immigrant backgrounds.

This qualitative-interpretive study adopts a comparative approach to examine teachers’ perceptions in Quebec and Luxembourg regarding their initial training in relation to diversity. Fourteen semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with primary teachers: nine in Luxembourg and five in Quebec. Participants were recruited based on their experience working with students from immigrant backgrounds and represented diverse linguistic and cultural school contexts. The study follows a semi-structured interview design organised around four themes derived from the conceptual framework: (1) competences required to support students from immigrant backgrounds; (2) teachers’ perceptions, convictions, beliefs, and potential implicit biases regarding these students; (3) competences reportedly developed through initial and further teacher training; (4) teachers’ perceived needs for improvement in initial and further training. Interviews lasted between 45 and 75 minutes and were transcribed verbatim. The analysis followed thematic analysis (Paillé & Mucchielli, 2012), combining a priori categories derived from the literature and the conceptual framework with a posteriori categories emerging inductively from teachers’ narratives. Coding followed an iterative process allowing categories to be refined through constant comparison within and across cases. The study also employed comparative analysis (Bray et al., 2007) to interpret results across the two contexts. This involved systematic juxtaposition of themes for Quebec and Luxembourg, identifying convergences, divergences, and context-specific patterns in teachers’ perceptions. Ethical considerations included informed consent, voluntary participation, anonymity, and secure data storage, in accordance with the ethics certificate attached to the thesis. The methodological coherence of the study is ensured through alignment between the research question, conceptual framework, data collection and analysis procedures. The interpretive stance acknowledges that teachers’ perceptions are shaped by sociopolitical contexts, institutional histories, and personal experiences, making qualitative interviews an appropriate tool to explore representations, attitudes, and perceptions related to diversity.

This study shows that teachers in both Quebec and Luxembourg recognise the importance of developing strong competences to support students from immigrant backgrounds; however, they perceive significant shortcomings in their initial training regarding the complexity of diversity. Although Luxembourg teachers demonstrate stronger plurilingual competences due to the multilingual structure of the school system, they report limited preparation for cultural, migratory, and anti-racist dimensions. Quebec teachers, conversely, emphasise greater reflexivity and openness but lack structured training in plurilingual pedagogies and explicit anti-racist approaches. Across both contexts, teachers express a need for better integration of diversity-related content within initial and further teacher education, structured opportunities to develop metareflection, and greater collaboration between universities, schools, and communities. Strengthening teacher training through a transversal approach – embedding linguistic, cultural, relational and ethical competences throughout curricula – could enhance the educational success of students from immigrant backgrounds.

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