Multicultural educational environments is challenge for teachers' competences. Multicultural competences represent a specific area of teachers' educational competences when working with pupils from different cultural backgrounds.The need for multicultural competence of teachers is emphasized by foreign authors (Güven et al., 2022). Multicultural competence is described as the ingenuity to take actions or bring conditions into existence that make as large the best favorable development of individuals (Sue & Sue, 2008). As defined by Pope, Reynolds and Mueller (2004), multicultural competence involves the awareness, knowledge and skills needed to work with others who are culturally different from self in meaning. This research study focuses on comparing the variables of multicultural competence (awareness, skill, knowledge) between preservice students and teachers. Research sample: 120 university students of pre-primary and primary education and 100 teachers. Research instruments used: Multicultural Competence Scale with subscales: awareness, skill and knowledge (Erdem, 2020). The differences between the variables were not confirmed. Both groups of respondents show very similar mean values for the variables. The results are discussed in the context of sources of multicultural competence in pre-service teacher education as well as in-service teachers.

Keywords: Multicultural competence, prospective teachers, teachers, comparative study.