Cultural Humility and Multicultural Teaching Competencies: Using a Person-Centered Approach to Explore Teacher Thriving and Burnout

The rates of burnout and mental health concerns among teachers in the United States continue to rise. One area of well-being relates to an educator's ability to connect with students from cultural backgrounds that differ from their own, though some educators may not feel confident in this area . One approach to this skill discrepancy is to increase educators’ cultural humility. Educators who utilize cultural humility feel a high sense of self-efficacy, which buffers against burnout. In this study, we used a nationally recruited sample of N = 888 teachers. Using latent profile analysis, a three-class model was the most parsimonious, with the Culturally Engaged class yielding the highest scores in the areas of mattering, self-efficacy, cultural humility, and multicultural competencies, yet the lowest scores in job satisfaction and highest scores in burnout. Teachers who are between the ages of 25–35, have 6–10 years of experience, are Black/African American, and indicated they would leave the profession earlier than expected were more likely to be in the Culturally Engaged profile.