This study examines how school social justice policies and practices (SJPP) relate to teachers’ self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms (SEMC) and whether this relationship operates through collective diversity beliefs (CDB).

In essence, classrooms have never been culturally homogeneous spaces. Based on Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of capital, each student enters school carrying different forms of cultural capital shaped by family background, community contexts, and unequal social conditions. Therefore, interactions between teachers and students in the classroom reflect encounters among different “habitus”, which are durable systems of dispositions shaping how individuals learn, communicate, and make sense of the world. From this perspective, diversity is an inherent characteristic of teaching and learning across educational systems. In contemporary societies, this structural diversity of classrooms has been intensified by the global mobility and demographic change, raising policy and professional expectations for equitable and inclusive teaching.

Within this context, SEMC emerges as a critical dimension of teachers’ professional capacity. Grounded in Bandura’s (1997) social cognitive theory, self-efficacy is conceptualized as the product of dynamic reciprocal interactions among personal characteristics, behaviors, and environmental influences. Accordingly, teachers’ SEMC develops not only through individual experience, but also through sustained engagement with school environments.

In response to diversity and equity concerns, many education systems have introduced SJPP to establish normative expectations, legitimize inclusive practices, and structure professional experiences, which together may constitute key environmental conditions for the development of teachers’ SEMC. However, institutional theory highlights that formal policies frequently remain weakly connected to daily professional practices, a phenomenon commonly described as policy-practice decoupling (Scott, 2014). Schools, therefore, should be understood as interactive social systems in which leaders shape shared meanings, coordinate teacher interaction, and reinforce professional norms (Hoy & Miskel, 2013). Thus, SJPP function not only as policy texts but as leadership instruments through which equity priorities are communicated and normalized in school life.

From this perspective, we argue that SJPP influence teachers’ SEMC primarily through a collective mechanism: CDB, defined as the school’s shared convictions regarding how teachers collectively understand and respond to student differences. Following the logic of Goddard and Goddard (2001), the successful internalization of SJPP into teachers’ collective consciousness establishes group norms that legitimize inclusive practices. These norms provide the social validation and motivational force necessary to promote individual SEMC. Thus, CDB can serve as a critical link that translates SJPP into teachers’ SEMC and lived professional realities.

While this theoretical integration highlights the importance of CDB in linking school-level SJPP to teachers’ SEMC, empirical evidence examining this mechanism remains limited (Jang et al., 2026; Peterson & Jensen, 2025; Schwarzenthal et al., 2023). Using pooled data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024 (OECD, 2025), this study addresses the following research questions:

(1) What are the relationships between school SJPP, teachers’ CDB, and teachers’ SEMC?

(2) Whether and to what extent does the teachers’ CDB mediate the association between school SJPP and teachers’ SEMC?

By testing a cross-national mechanism linking policy-practice environments to teacher efficacy through collective belief climate, the study contributes to international discussions on how schools can move beyond symbolic compliance toward meaningful equity in practice—informing both school leadership and policy design.

Data and Sample Utilizing the TALIS 2024 dataset, this study analyzed a nested sample of 49,488 lower secondary teachers within 9,042 schools. The final sample resulted from excluding countries with insufficient data, retaining teachers who answered the SEMC items in the rotated design, and handling missing values. Measurement SJPP was constructed as a latent factor using 12 principal-reported dichotomous items, representing the diversity and equity policies and practices implemented at the school level. To ensure model parsimony and stabilize between-school estimates, these items were aggregated into three thematic parcels: (1) cultural inclusion, (2) anti-discrimination, and (3) equity-oriented support. A summed score ranging from 0 to 4 (from none to all four policies/practices implemented) was computed for each of the parcels. For the mediator and outcome variables, the study utilized scale scores provided by the OECD (2025). CDB indicated the school’s normative climate based on principals’ proxy reports of the perceived proportion of teachers holding specific diversity beliefs. Meanwhile, SEMC reflected teachers’ belief in their teaching capabilities for equity in multicultural and diverse classrooms. These OECD-derived scale scores were constructed and validated using cross-national confirmatory factor analysis, demonstrating satisfactory model fit and reliability. Data Analysis This study used SPSS 27 for the data preparation and Mplus 7.4 to conduct MSEM for data analysis. Teacher sampling weights were applied to account for the complex design and ensure national representativeness. Firstly, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for the outcome variable (SEMC) was calculated to justify the multilevel framework. Based on thematic parcels, the measurement model for the latent predictor (SJPP) was verified via multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA). Model fit was evaluated using RMSEA (<.06), CFI (>.90), and SRMR-within/between (<.08) (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Secondly, the structural model was estimated to test the hypothesized relationships. Paths a (SJPP to CDB), path b (CDB to SEMC), and path c’ (direct effect of SJPP on SEMC) were specified at the between-school level. To isolate the structural effects, we controlled for teacher-level (education level, teaching experience) and school-level covariates (school type, school location, student composition). The indirect effect (a x b) and total effect were estimated using the MODEL CONSTRAINT command. The maximum likelihood robust (MLR) estimator was employed to provide standard errors robust to non-normality. Missing data on endogenous variables were handled using full information maximum likelihood (FIML), while listwise deletion was applied to exogenous covariates.

The MSEM analysis demonstrated a satisfactory fit to the data (χ2(16) = 369.798, p < .001; RMSEA = 0.021; CFI = 0.920; SRMR-within = 0.001; SRMR-between = 0.035). The ICC for SEMC was 0.179, justifying the multilevel framework. While TLI (0.841) was slightly low, overall indices indicated an acceptable model fit. The three parcels of SJPP loaded significantly onto the school-level latent factor (p < .001), with standardized loadings ranging from 0.548 to 0.720, ensuring construct validity. Structural results at the between-school level revealed that SJPP had a significant positive relationship with CDB (β = 0.290, p < .001). In turn, CDB showed a significant positive relationship with individual teachers’ SEMC (β = 0.073, p < .001). Crucially, while the indirect effect was statistically significant (Estimate = 0.018, p < .001), the direct effect of SJPP on SEMC was non-significant. These results suggest that SJPP are unlikely to strengthen teachers’ SEMC simply through formal adoption. Instead, these school-level SJPP appear consequential when they are collectively interpreted and internalized into shared normative expectations. Teachers with stronger shared beliefs about diversity appear better able to translate institutional commitments into supportive professional environments that foster their confidence in working with diverse learners. By drawing on pooled international TALIS 2024 data, the study suggests that this mechanism operates cross-nationally, rather than being context-specific. The findings demonstrate schools as social organizations where collective beliefs play a central role in shaping how policy signals are enacted in practice. For practice and policy, the implication is straightforward: strengthening teachers’ SEMC requires attention to both the content of SJPP and how schools cultivate shared meanings around diversity. Leadership efforts that foster professional dialogue, normalize inclusive practice, and reduce ambiguity about equity goals may be essential for translating SJPP into supportive working environments that nurture teacher efficacy.

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