Intercultural sensitivity of primary and secondary school students in Belgrade : Gender and age specificities
Апстракт
Intercultural sensitivity of students is becoming an increasingly important topic for
intercultural education and society. Intercultural sensitivity is defined as an individual's ability
to develop a positive emotion towards understanding and appreciating cultural differences in
order to promote appropriate and effective behavior in intercultural communication. In order
to examine the level of intercultural sensitivity of students, a survey was conducted on a sample
of 475 students (64.8% female), aged 13–19 years (M = 15.61; SD = 1.49), who attend primary
(26.5% of students) and secondary schools in Belgrade. The instrument Intercultural
Sensitivity Scale (ISS) was used to assess intercultural sensitivity. A short explanation was
written to the students that there are a large number of cultures in the world that differ from
each other in terms of customs, traditions and language, and that all people have the opportunity
to interact with people from different culture. Student...s were asked to evaluate their own
opinions and feelings in such situations. ISS is a five-point Likert-type scale, which consists of
a total of 24 items, further divided into five subscales: Interaction engagement (e.g. “I enjoy
interacting with people from different cultures”), Respect for cultural differences (e.g. “I
respect the values of people from different cultures”), Interaction confidence (e.g. “I am pretty
sure of myself in interacting with people from different cultures”), Interaction enjoyment (e.g.
“I get upset easily when interacting with people from different cultures”) and Interaction
attentiveness (measure social behaviors related to personal ability of attentiveness and
perceptiveness in interactions; e.g. “I am sensitive to my culturally-distinct counterpart’s subtle
meanings during our interaction”). The internal reliability of the scale was good (α = .88). The
mean global ISS score was 4 ± .57. When the scores on the subscales are observed, the students
record the highest score on the Respect for cultural diversity subscale (M = 4.30; SD = .76),
and the lowest on the Interaction attentiveness subscale (M = 3.27; SD = .95). Female students
are more interculturally sensitive than male students, both in terms of the total score (t(467) =
-7.36, p < 0.01, d = .69), and in the scores on all subscales. Also, it was established that the
level of intercultural sensitivity of students increases with age (r = 0.2, p < 0.01), that is,
secondary school students are more interculturally sensitive than elementary school students
(t(474) = 3.83, p < 0.01, d = .44), which can be explained by richer experience in diverse
interactions at an older age. This trend is also observed on all subscales, except for the
Interaction attentiveness subscale. The obtained results can serve as a basis for designing
educational interventions or programs aimed at developing students' intercultural sensitivity.
The above is particularly significant if we consider the importance of intercultural sensitivity
for the student's life and active participation in a multicultural and intercultural society.
Кључне речи:
intercultural sensitivity / students / cultural differencesИзвор:
Empirical studies in psychology, 2023, 29, 118-Издавач:
- Beograd : Filozofski fakultet
Напомена:
- Conference presentation abstract: XXIX scientific conference; Empirical studies in psychology, (March 31-April 2 2023) Belgrade, Serbia.