A broad cultural diversity converges in today’s classrooms. Although this diversity is inherent to the human being and it is a permanent feature in every context, it has increased in Europe recently because of the migratory process. The “Global village” foreseen by McLuham has become a verified fact today as it is indicated by people’s mobility around the world, among other aspects. The educational system in the 21st century faces a major challenge as the teaching process must guarantee high quality education at the same time it meets cultural diversity within a heterogeneous society (Ainscow, 2008). In that respect, it is important to clarify that it is not a question of understanding cultural diversity as a new or controversial concept, but of overcoming situations of inequality related to the students’ cultural background.  The figures provided by the last PISA report (Program for International Student Assessment) held in Spain and Europe help us understand this idea as native students achieved significantly higher marks than non-native students (OECD, 2010).

There are numerous reasons although there is also an agreement on considering teachers to be one of the main factors to ensure both each student’s right to learn as well as the educational system improvement (Darling-Hammond, 2006).The teacher is a key figure in the success and failure achieved, and teachers, what they teach and especially, how they teach, are strategic factors which must be taken into account within a responsive multicultural education. This emphasis given to "how to teach", as it has been stated by Korthagen (2010) after his research, evidence that an important number of teaching decisions are taken unconsciously, so that the educational process is more strongly influenced by routines and implicit beliefs (Gay, 2010) than by teaching theories.

However, despite the relevance given to beliefs and, as a result, to the teacher’s "being", there are many voices warning about their low consideration in pre-service teachers’ training. In this way, there is a growing need to include new aspects such as emotions, beliefs, attitudes or values in this training (Grossman & McDonald, 2008). A lack of attention to these elements can be seen in the research on beliefs about cultural diversity during the initial training of teachers. Although it is currently considered a priority area of study, there is a scarce number of studies towards this direction, and such existing studies are focused only on small samples or on the evaluation of local training programs (Grant & Gibson, 2011).

In order to solve some of the abovementioned limitations, this paper presents a research focused on the study of the pre-service teachers' beliefs about cultural diversity at the beginning and ending of their training. The aim is to analyze the influence of the training process over the modification or upholding of initial beliefs.

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