engleski

Student teachers’ perception of intercultural competence needed for teaching in a multicultural classroom

The European school environments have become multicultural and teachers are faced with students of diverse cultural backgrounds. The importance of promoting intercultural values and ideas in the educational process lies in making students aware of their own competence, cultural background and identity. Intercultural competence is frequently mentioned as a desirable quality possessed by graduates (students) and teachers. To successfully promote intercultural ideas and values, future teachers should not only have professional skills, but also personal competence – cognitive, emotional, and behavioural. Which skills are indispensable in student /teacher education for successful interaction with pupils of different cultural backgrounds in schools? What does it mean to be interculturally competent and interculturally sensitive? These are only some questions which we shall discuss in the theoretical part of the paper, while in the second part of the paper we will present the main research results regarding the level of intercultural sensitivity and basic knowledge of interculturalism among students regarding their types of faculties, level of study, (undergraduate and graduate level), course of study and experience of living abroad or visiting other countries. Another purpose of research is to identify the desired intercultural competence from the students’ viewpoint. In this regard, we defined two hypotheses. The first is that graduate level students display more intercultural sensitivity and intercultural knowledge than undergraduate level students, while the second hypothesis is that students from teacher training faculties should have a higher level of intercultural sensitivity than students from the faculty of philosophy and other faculties. The research was conducted on a sample of 400 students from the University of Pula and Rijeka (Croatia). The sample of students consisted of 148 (37%) male and 252 (63%) female.

teachers; intercultural competence; intercultural sensitivity; ethnocentrism; ethnorelativism; prejudice; stereotype; attitudes; intercultural communication (verbal and nonverbal)

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