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Teacher effectiveness in diverse school environments depends highly on the multicultural education courses provided by Educator Preparation Programs (EPP). Research measuring new teachers’ (i.e. teachers having 0-3 years of teaching experience) effectiveness as a result of EPPs’ multicultural education courses is limited. The purpose of this study was to examine if any association occurred between the number of multicultural courses offered to pre-service teacher candidates by EPPs and their graduates rating of effectiveness, as it pertains to creating a culturally diverse classroom environment.

Using data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) and public EPPs course catalogs for North Carolina, this descriptive study investigates multicultural education course offerings and recent teacher graduate data for North Carolina for 2015, as it pertains to creating culturally diverse learning environments for students of color.

The results indicate that multiple EPPs in North Carolina are not providing multicultural courses for their pre-service teachers, and that novice teachers in North Carolina are lacking the ability to produce diverse learning environments for students of color at a high capacity as defined by the North Carolina Teacher Effectiveness definition.

Data were retrieved from 2015. In the current year, EPPs could have boosted their offerings of multicultural courses since that time.

It is anticipated that the lack course offerings by EPPs will directly reflect new teachers’ ability to create respectful learning environment for students of color, suggesting that EPPs may be counterproductive towards teacher candidates’ understanding of race in the classroom.

This study’s originality exists in its ability to begin to connect new teachers’ productivity with regards for promoting diversity or multiculturalism and the multicultural courses offered by EPPs.

Studies and programming on belonging in higher education tend to focus on college students’ sense of belonging, but the experiences of faculty and staff are equally important. Minoritized faculty and staff disproportionately report lower levels of sense of belonging and experience greater turnover outcomes. A sense of belonging among faculty and staff lessens their intention to quit, facilitates research collaboration and increases organizational commitment.

In this scoping review, we analyzed 24 articles yielded from three databases (Academic Search Complete, JSTOR and Web of Science) that synthesize extant literature on faculty and staff’s sense of belonging.

We found that a sense of belonging for faculty and staff (1) is often examined without being consistently defined; (2) can be hindered by the stigmatization of minoritized identities (e.g. race, gender and class), exclusive organizational policies and the academy’s socio-political structure remain barriers to a sense of belonging and (3) can be fostered through social support, celebrating professional legitimacy and valuing diversity.

This study details the educational landscape of sense of belonging for faculty, and call for more attention to sense of belonging for staff, so that higher education institutions can utilize organizational policies and interventions to help foster a sense of belonging, which can lead to an increase in productivity, retention and job satisfaction.